The  Alphabet  and  Language 


Immortality  of  the  Big  Threes 

iv 

>altb  and  Poverty  of  th 
Chicao  Exposition 


assays 


by   T^homas    Magee 


LIBRARV 

01-  THK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Accessions  No. 


THOMAS  MAGEE  DIES|J 
AFTER  A  LONG 


Millionaire  Real  Estate  Man 
Passes  Away  at  Miradero 
Sanitarium  —  His  Death  Was 
Expected  for  Three  Days  Past 


SANTA  BARBARA,  September  30.—  The  j 
death  occurred  here  late  this  afternoon,  at: 
Miradero  Sanitarium,  of  Thomas  Magee,  Sr.^i 
the   San   Francisco   millionaire   real  estate; 
owner.     He  had  been  desperately  ill  for  two 
weeks  and  for  three  days  his  death  was  ex-1 
pected.     Mr.  Magee  had  been  a  sick  man  for  j 
many  months.     It  was  a  last  hope,  bringing  j 
him   here.     His  wife,  formerly  Miss  Helen  < 
Curtis  of  San  Francisco,  accompanied  him 
to   Miradero  and  was  at  his  bedside  \vhen 
he    passed     away.     Mr.     Tom     Magee,    Jr. 
reached  here  yesterday  in  answer  to  a  tele 
gram  advising  him  of  his  father's  condition, 
and  to-day  Fred  Magee  and  Dr.   Philip  K. 
Brown  of  the  Sanitarium  arrived.     To-night 
the   remains   were   taken  north. 

The  news  of  Mr.  Magee's  death  was  not 
made  public  from  the  sanitarium  until  late 
to-nigh.  i  after  the  widow  and  sons  had  left 
Santa  Barbara. 


THE    LATE    THOMAS    MAGEE 


The  Alphabet  and  Language 
Immortality  of  the  Big  Trees 

Wealth  and  Poverty  of  the 
Chicago  Exposition 

Sbree  Essays 


By 

Thomas  Magee 


«?•"•  .- 


WILLIAM    DOXEY 

631   MARKET  STREET,   UNDER  PALACE  HOTEL 

SAN   FRANCISCO 

1895 


COPYRIGHT,  1894,  BY  WILLIAM  DOXEY. 


C.  A.  MURDOCK  A  CO. 
PRINTERS. 


PREFACE. 

ANY  ONE  actuated  by  a  proper  spirit,  who  has  derived 
great  mental  profit  and  pleasure  from  prolonged  study 
of  outdoor  nature,  or  of  art,  science,  or  any  branch  of 
instructive  literature,  desires  to  extend  that  pleasure 
and  profit  to  others.  This  will  especially  be  true  where 
a  lover  of  good  books  constantly  sees,  from  library  re 
ports,  how  small  a  proportion  of  such  books  are  tasted 
beside  the  vast  number  of  trashy  volumes  devoured. 
The  writer  of  these  essays  knows  that  the  subjects 
herein  treated  are  great  and  profitable  ones,  and  that, 
even  if  he  has  been  incompetent  to  do  anything  like 
justice  to  them,  or  has  misapprehended  some  of  their 
teachings  and  laws,  his  book  still  contains  enough 
instructive  and  elevating  facts  to  attract  the  attention 
of  students.  He  thereby  hopes  to  lead  them  to  pursue 
the  study  of  some  at  least  of  the  subjects  herein  directly 
or  indirectly  treated.  He  has  derived  intense  pleasure 
and  profit  therefrom;  others  cannot  fail  to  give  like 
testimony,  if  they  use  like  diligence. 

The  author  has  long  been  deeply  impressed  with  the 
necessity  of  mental  digestion  and  assimilation  following 
reading.  If  they  do  not,  reading  is  but  unprofitable 
"  cramming,"  from  which  no  real  mental  nutriment  is 
derived.  He,  therefore,  urges  students  to  think  as  they 
read,  and  to  allow  no  author  to  impress  his  conclu 
sions  upon  them  until  they  have  themselves  carefully 
exercised  their  best  judgment  upon  the  subject  under 
review. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

7 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE 

IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  BIG  TREES 59 

WEALTH  AND  POVERTY  OF  THE  CHICAGO 

EXPOSITION  .  79 


The  Alphabet  and  Language, 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

HOMER,  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides, 
Aristophanes.  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and 
Milton  have  all  produced  works  upon  which 
the  world  has  stamped  the  highest  seal  of 
approval ;  but  a  vastly  greater  and  more  diffi 
cult  work  preceded  them,  without  which  their 
authorship  and  fame  would  alike  have  been 
impossible.  This  work  was  the  ALPHABET,  the 
production  of  which  was,  in  some  respects,  the 
greatest  mental  achievement  ever  accomplished 
by  man.  The  knowledge  of  our  A  B  C's,  that 
begins  almost  when  the  maternal  lacteal  nour 
ishment  ends,  and  which  in  education  bears 
about  the  same  relation  to  solid  knowledge 
that  first  nourishment  does  to  solid  food,  is 
more  wonderful  to  contemplate,  and  was  more 
difficult  and  tedious  of  invention  and  perfec 
tion,  than  the  works  of  the  world's  most  deeply 
revered  authors.  Individual  men  were  the 
authors  of  our  greatest  books ;  but  it  required 
the  three  greatest  nations  of  antiquity,  and  at 
least  six  thousand  years  of  time,  to  produce  a 
phonetic  alphabet.  And  even  then  it  had  not 
by  any  means  reached  its  present  stage  of  de 
velopment;  for  it  is  still  far  from  perfection. 


10     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

Even  yet  the  alphabet  does  not  by  any  means 
furnish  a  visible  sign  for  every  audible  sound 
which  the  voice  utters.  It  is  both  redundant 
and  defective ;  of  the  twenty-six  letters  of  our 
alphabet,  three  (c,  q,  and  x)  are  practically 
useless,  and  we  are  therefore  left  with  but 
twenty-three  letters  to  express  not  less  than 
thirty-two  sounds.  The  phonetic  alphabet  was 
invented— or,  rather,  developed— by  the  Egyp 
tians,  in  four  stages,  from  hieroglyphics.  Hier 
oglyphics  are  picture-writing.  All  phonetic 
alphabets  have  their  beginning  in  hieroglyphic 
writing.  The  work  of  developing  a  phonetic 
alphabet  from  hieroglyphics  occupied  the 
Egyptians  at  least  four  thousand  years.  They 
would,  perhaps,  have  satisfactorily  completed 
the  task,  but  that  the  use  of  hieroglyphics, 
ideograms,  and  phonograms  had  such  a  hold 
of  their  conservative  minds  that  they  never 
rose  to  the  untrammeled  use  of  a  phonetic 
alphabet.  Belief  in  the  sacredness  of  the  old 
forms  also  had  its  effect  in  checking  their 
progress.  They  used  the  phonetic  alphabet, 
indeed,  but  so  cumbrously  that  they  derived 
little  benefit  from  its  employment.  The  Egyp 
tian  alphabet  was  taken  from  Egypt  by  two  or 
three  branches  of  the  great  Semitic  race.  The 
Phoenicians,  the  maritime  branch  of  the  fam- 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     11 

ily,  did  most  toward  the  development  of  the 
alphabet.  Of  the  twenty-four  letters  in  the 
Greek  alphabet,  sixteen  are  commonly  attrib 
uted  to  the  Phoenician  Cadmus. 

The  object  and  use  of  an  alphabet  are  to 
express  in  speech  every  sound  that  is  uttered 
by  the  voice,  and,  ultimately,  in  the  far  higher 
development  of  words,  every  thought  that  has 
its  birth  in  the  mind  of  man.  Five  leading 
ancient  authors  assert  that  the  alphabet  passed 
from  Phoenicia  into  Greece.  The  best  authori 
ties  agree  in  asserting  that  the  Egyptians  in 
vented  the  alphabet,  that  the  Phoenicians 
improved  it,  and  that  the  mental  flower  of  the 
Aryan  race,  the  Greeks,  in  the  dawn  of  their 
history,  did  most  to  bring  it  to  the  stage  of 
comparative  perfection.  From  alpha  and  beta, 
the  first  two  letters  of  the  Greek  alphabet,  in 
its  ultimate  form,  the  word  alphabet  is  derived, 
although,  by  going  back  further,  we  find  aleph 
and  beth,  the  two  corresponding  characters  in 
the  Phoenician,  or  Semitic,  alphabet.  The  first 
means  an  ox,  and  the  second  a  house.  All  ex 
isting  European  alphabets  have  been  derived 
from  that  of  Phoenicia.  To  the  Greeks  great 
credit  is  due  for  extending  the  use  and  signifi 
cation  of  the  vowel  sounds.  All  of  the  Semitic 
alphabets  were  consonantal ;  that  is,  the  conso- 


12     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

nants  were  the  radical  elements,  and  the  vow 
els  relational  only.  The  Greeks,  in  the  devel 
opment  of  the  alphabet  they  received  from 
the  Phoenicians,  altered  this,  exhibiting  the 
mental  ability  and  creative  genius  they  subse 
quently  did  in  architecture,  sculpture,  oratory, 
poetry,  and  science.  They  made  the  vowels 
the  pillars  upon  which  the  sound  structure 
rests.  Consonants  in  their  and  our  alphabets 
are  largely  dumb  (soundless)  without  the 
vowels.  For  instance,  the  letters  d-l-l  are 
soundless;  but  with  the  aid  of  the  vowel  6, 
they  blossom  into  sound,  and  become  dell,  sig 
nificant  of  flowers,  grass,  and  running  water. 

In  asserting  that  the  invention  of  the  alpha 
bet  was,  in  some  respects,  the  greatest  inven 
tion  of  the  human  mind,  probably  many  will 
connect  the  invention  with  material  rather 
than  mental  work.  The  essence  of  alphabets 
and  words  is  material,  too.  That  which  is 
most  metaphysical,  mysterious,  and  spiritual 
in  both  can  always  be  traced  back  to  some 
physical  fact  in  nature.  All  picture-writing 
was  drawn  from  that  source,  although  the 
analogies  were  still  mental.  A  picture  of  a 
bird  (to  represent  flight),  and  of  the  sun  (to 
represent  light,  brightness,  heat,  or  time),  and 
of  a  house  with  a  door  open  (to  impart  the 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     13 

information  that  the  inhabitant  had  gone  on 
a  journey  from  the  house  two  suns  or  days 
before),  was  both  a  material  and  mental  pic 
ture  ;  the  conveyance  of  a  message  as  truly  to 
the  mind,  as  far  as  it  went,  as  the  writing  of  a 
letter.  This  is  a  lower  stage  of  language ;  and, 
as  I  have  said,  that  is  where  the  Egyptians 
and  all  other  nations  began  —  the  majority 
progressed  no  further.  But  beyond  this  first, 
this  hieroglyphic  and  ideographic  stage,  the 
Egyptians  passed  to  the  glory  of  the  true  alpha 
bet,  their  letters  being  still  copied  from  living 
animals,  or  from  the  sun,  moon,  or  stars,  from 
fields  or  from  trees,  but  now  representing 
sounds  only.  The  letters  have  since  been 
so  changed  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  trace 
the  physical  resemblances,  although  Dr.  Isaac 
Taylor,  in  his  work  on  the  alphabet,  has  done 
so  with  a  fair  degree  of  success.  In  a  lecture 
on  this  subject,  Max  Miiller  said : 

"  We  still  write  English  in  hieroglyphics  :  and,  in  spite 
of  all  the  vicissitudes  through  which  the  ancient  hiero 
glyphics  have  passed,  in  their  journey  from  Egypt  to 
Phosnicia,  from  Phoenicia  to  Greece,  from  Greece  to  Italy, 
and  from  Italy  to  England,  when  we  write  a  capital  F; 
when  we  draw  the  top  line  and  the  smaller  line  through 
the  middle  of  the  letter,  we  simply  draw  the  two  horns 
of  the  cerastes,  the  horned  serpent  which  the  ancient 
Egyptians  used  for  representing  the  sound  of  F.  In  the 
same  manner,  in  writing,  the  form  of  our  capital  Jzf^still 


14     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

recalls  very  strikingly  the  bent  back  of  a  crouching  lion, 
which,  in  the  later  hieroglyphic  inscriptions  represents 
the  sound  of  L.n 

Dr.  Taylor  and  Max  Miiller  derived  all,  or 
nearly  all,  their  information  on  this  subject 
from  the  learned  French  Egyptologist,  De 
Rouge  (Memoire  sur  I'Origine  Egyptienne  de 
r Alphabet  Phcenicien :  par  E.  de  Rouge,  Paris, 
187  f).  In  the  transition  from  the  singleness' 
and  simplicity  of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet 
to  the  combination  of  words  and  ideas,  resi 
dent  in  and  capable  of  expression  by  them, 
ages  elapsed.  The  letters,  in  one  sense,  were 
the  raw  material  only  —  words,  the  finished 
product ;  and  it  is  perhaps  approximately  cor 
rect  to  say  that  the  distance  between  letters 
and  words  is  as  great  as  between  iron  in  bars 
and  iron  in  the  works  of  a  watch  or  in  the 
steam-engine.  The  difference  between  words 
as  they  now  exist  in  English  orthography  and 
as  both  appeared  in  the  comparatively  recent 
age  of  Henry  the  Eighth  is  very  great.  Four 
hundred  years  ago  each  writer  did  that  which 
was  right  in  his  own  eyes  in  spelling;  but 
orthography,  through  subsequent  literary  cul 
ture,  is  now  bounded  by  rules  nearly  as  pre 
cise  as  those  of  grammar.  The  alphabet  is 
the  vehicle  for  the  expression  of  the  varying 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     15 

sounds  of  the  human  tongue;  words  express 
the  feelings  and  thoughts  —  the  most  tender 
or  passionate  feelings  and  the  most  sublime 
and  instructive  thoughts  —  of  the  mental  and 
spiritual  powers.  They  have  been  truthfully 
called  the  wings  of  thought.  Whether  it  is 
true  or  false  that  we  cannot  even  think  with 
out  words,  it  is  certain  that  we  cannot  com 
municate  with  each  other  without  them. 
"  Things,"  Dr.  Lewand  says,  "are  thinks";  and 
"  thinks,"  Max  Muller  adds,  "  are  words." 

Language,  more  than  anything  else,  enables 
each  generation  to  transmit  to  its  successor, 
not  alone  all  its  strictly  literary  treasures 
of  wisdom  and  knowledge,  but  also  all  its 
mechanical,  agricultural,  metallurgical,  and 
scientific  knowledge.  The  pecuniary  and  all 
other  material  wealth  transmitted  by  each 
generation  to  its  successor,  is  of  small  value 
compared  to  that  transmitted  by  language, 
through  word  of  mouth  and  the  printed  page. 
Speech  is  friendly,  because  it  cannot  be  exer 
cised  at  all  without  the  social  state. 

Mysterious,  wonderful,  and  elevated  as  the 
alphabet  is,  it  is  still  only  the  alphabet,  beside 
the  far  higher  mental  table-land  of  words. 
Our  words  are,  indeed,  ourselves.  Words  best 
show  a  man.  "  Speak,  that  I  may  see  thee," 


16     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

says  Ben  Jonson;  and  again,  our  Lord,  speak 
ing  on  the  most  solemn  subject  to  which  hu 
man  attention  can  be  called,  that  of  the  final 
judgment,  says :  "  For  by  thy  words  thou  shalt 
be  justified,  and  by  thy  words  thou  shalt  be 
condemned."  Our  words  being  ourselves,  by 
them  we  must  stand  or  fall.  Right  acts  are  ne 
cessarily  accompanied  by  right  words.  There 
is,  of  course,  the  strongest  possible  motive  to 
those  engaged  in  wrong  acts  to  cover  or  ex 
cuse  them  by  right  words;  but  words  thus 
used  lose  their  force,  and  are  seldom  able  to 
convince,  when  the  heart  and  truth  are  not  in 
them.  Deception  by  looks  is  easier  than  de 
ception  by  words.  If  we  will  exercise  our 
memories  to  remember  why  we  have  liked  one 
person  and  disliked  another,  we  will  find  that 
the  foundation  of  our  decision  was  based  more 
upon  their  speech  than  upon  anything  else. 
Words  were  given  us,  a  charlatan  statesman 
said,  to  enable  us  to  conceal  our  thoughts. 
This  is  a  lie  against  nature  and  against  lan 
guage.  And  no  one,  not  even  the  most  con 
summate  Machiavelli,  who  under  the  guise  of 
a  saint  is  endeavoring  to  play  the  devil,  can 
long  succeed  by  his  words  in  deceiving  any 
one.  One  of  the  best  proofs  of  this  is  that 
ethology  means  the  science  of  character  and  a 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     17 

treatise  on  morality.  Leaving  aside  the  moral 
guilt  and  debasement  of  the  speaker,  there 
fore,  altogether,  speech  itself  is  debased  when 
not  used  on  the  straight  lines  of  truth. 

It  is  most  significant  that  high  deeds  in 
volve  high  language,  and  low  deeds  must  have 
their  expression  in  low  language.  Sophocles 
said  to  his  countrymen,  who  complained  that 
he  had  debased  their  language :  "  You  do  the 
deeds,  and  your  ungodly  deeds  find  me  the 
words"  Marsh  says :  "  The  men  who  crawled 
to  such  a  tyrant  as  Tiberius  used  as  lofty  lan 
guage  as  was  used  by  the  fathers  of  the  Ro 
man  Republic."  It  will  seem  like  presumption 
to  contradict  such  an  authority,  but  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  Roman  speech  and  inde 
pendence  were  both  alike  degraded,  by  the 
body-and-mind-crushing  despotism  of  the  five 
monsters  who  were  misnamed  Csesars.  Of  one 
period  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  Tacitus  says  : 

"At  no  time  was  the  city  in  a  state  of  deeper  anxiety 
and  alarm.  Men  were  afraid  to  meet,  afraid  to  discourse ; 
silence  and  distrust  extended  alike  to  strangers  and  ac 
quaintances,  and  both  were  equally  divided ;  even  things 
dumb  and  inanimate,  roofs  and  walls,  were  regarded 
with  apprehension.  Such  was  the  pestilential  character 
of  those  times,  so  contaminated  with  adulation,  that  not 
only  the  first  nobles,  but  all  who  had  been  consuls,  strove 
for  priority  in  the  fulsomeness  and  extravagance  of  their 
votes.  .  .  .  '  How  fitted  for  slaves  are  these  men ! ' 


11711       T 


18     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

Tiberius  constantly  said,  as  he  left  the  Senate.    Even  he 
nauseated  the  crouching  tameness  of  his  slaves." 

That  I  am  not  doing  Marsh  and  his  great 
works  on  language  injustice,  these  extracts  will 
show.  Besides,  he  elsewhere  asserts,  what  is 
recognized  as  a  universal  truth  by  all  writers 
on  philology,  that  the  degradation  of  a  nation 
means  the  degradation  of  its  language.  Never 
was  Rome  so  degraded,  not  even  under  her 
other  imperial  monsters  (Caligula,  Nero,  Do- 
mitian,  or  Commodus),  as  under  Tiberius,  and 
his  real  ruler,  Sejanus.  Language  as  well  as 
liberty,  therefore,  undoubtedly  suffered.  In 
deed,  one  of  the  most  painful  things  to  con 
template  in  connection  with  the  bondage  of  a 
nation  is  that  its  language  and  literature  suffer 
no  less  than  the  bodies  and  minds  of  its  people. 
The  north  of  England  stubbornly  resisted 
William  the  Conqueror.  He  retaliated  fear 
fully,  and  in  beating  the  people  into  submis 
sion,  he  thereby  nearly  obliterated  northern 
English  culture.  Macaulay  says  that  for  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  Norman  Con 
quest  there  was,  to  speak  strictly,  no  English 
history.  The  rise  of  a  national  literature  in 
Hungary  has  twice  been  crushed  by  Austrian 
oppression ;  first  in  the  sixteenth  and  the 
second  time  in  this  century.  Egypt  never  re- 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     19 

covered  from  her  crushing  conquest  by  Cam- 
byses.  Rome  conquered  Carthage,  and  Car 
thage  has  left  us  no  literature.  On  this  sub 
ject  Professor  W.  D.  Whitney,  in  his  work  on 
"Language  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  says: 

"  Phoenicia  has  left  us  no  literature.  The  coffin  of  one 
of  the  kings  of  Sidon,  found  but  a  few  years  since,  pre 
sents  in  its  detailed  inscriptions  a  fuller  view  of  the 
Phcenician  tongue  than  is  derivable  from  all  its  other 
known  records,  taken  altogether.  A  few  inscriptions 
and  a  mutilated  and  obscure  fragment  of  the  Roman 
poet  Plautus,  referring  to  Carthage,  are  the  only  relics 
left  us  of  the  idiom  of  that  queenly  city." 

A  Latin  translation  was  made  of  Mago's  work 
on  agriculture,  by  order  of  the  Roman  Senate. 
When  it  is  remembered  that  Hamilcar  and 
Hannibal,  in  all  the  varied  qualities  that  go  to 
make  up  great  commanders,  were  unquestion 
ably  two  of  the  greatest  soldiers  of  the  world, 
it  is  forever  to  be  regretted  that  Rome's 
triumph  left  Carthage  no  less  without  mental 
than  military  existence.  Had  Carthage 
triumphed,  the  case  would  have  been  very 
different.  Even  the  gods  worshiped  by  a  con 
quering  people  were  frequently  forced  on  the 
conquered.  In  the  Hibbert  Lectures,  by  Sayce, 
he  says  that  if  Bel-Merodach,  the  chief  of  the 
Babylonian  pantheon,  was  lord  of  other  gods, 
he  was  so  only  because  the  king  of  Babylon 


20     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

was  lord  also  of  other  cities  and  lauds.  But 
when  Babylonia  ceased  to  be  an  independent 
power,  the  star  of  supremacy  of  its  chief  god 
also  set. 

Rome's  turn  came  after  that  of  Carthage: 
the  imperial  city  was  ground  down  by  its 
tyrants.  Its  literature,  considering  that  it  was 
mistress  of  the  world  for  hundreds  of  year^, 
is  pitifully  poor,  compared  to  that  of  Greece. 
But  the  genius  of  the  Roman  people  was  not 
originally  directed  toward  literature,  but  tow 
ard  civic  virtue,  civic  obedience,  and  continued 
conquest.  These  are  the  reasons  why  Rome 
never  produced  any  world-work  in  literature. 
When  conquest  left  Rome  time  for  mental  cul 
ture,  tyranny,  luxury,  and  vice  had  smothered 
freedom,  and  the  faith  and  truth  which  had 
characterized  the  primitive  Roman.  Even  the 
two  most  happily  circumstanced  and  most 
popular  of  Roman  poets,  Virgil  and  Horace, 
were  mentally  shackled.  The  fact  that  the 
hand  was  gloved,  and  that  the  tyrant  threw 
continual  flowers  and  favors  in  their  paths, 
did  not  take  the  gyves  off  their  minds.  They 
were  there  to  puff  and  praise  Augustus  chiefly. 
After  the  second  Punic  War,  lingual  and  na 
tional  decadence  began  at  Rome.  All  litera 
ture  was  based  on  Greek  models.  The  Roman 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     21 

mind  was  almost  wholly  imitative,  and  con 
stantly  looked  back  to  Greece.  Cicero  wrote 
thus  to  his  brother  :  "  I  am  not  ashamed  to 
confess  that  all  my  own  attainments  are  due  to 
those  studies  and  those  accomplishments  which 
have  been  handed  down  to  us  in  the  literary 
treasures  and  the  philosophical  system  of  the 
Greeks."  Rome  conquered  the  world,  and  her 
language  was  long  as  imperial  as  her  legions 
and  emperors  —  one  eminently  of  force  and 
command.  Rome  impressed  her  language 
on  nearly  all  of  her  conquered  subjects.  She 
wholly  failed  to  do  this  with  Greece,  just 
as  the  Mantchus  as  notably  failed  with 
the  Chinese,  and  the  Northmen  with  the 
French,  because  the  nations  conquered  in 
these  cases  were  mentally  the  superior  peo 
ple.  Despite  these  exceptional  facts,  however, 
neither  the  Greek  language  under  the  Ro 
mans,  the  Chinese  under  the  Mantchus,  nor 
the  French  language  in  the  portion  of  France 
ruled  by  the  Normans,  was  what  each  would 
have  been  had  no  conquest  been  achieved 
over  the  native  people.  The  Dutch  resisted 
Spanish  oppression,  and  overthrew  the  then 
greatest  nation  of  Europe.  The  result  is  that 
the  Dutch  is  a  living  and  separate  language 
in  Europe  to-day;  a  philological  game  ban- 


off 


22     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

tarn,   as  it  were,   holding   up   its   head    and 
crowing. 

Of  Arabic,  Dr.  Isaac  Taylor  says :  "  Of  all 
existing  alphabets,  the  Arabic,  both  from 
its  literary  importance  and  its  geographical 
extent,  ranks  next  after  the  great  Latin  alpha 
bet  itself."  This  is  saying  very  much  —  for 
all  European  alphabets  came  from  the  Latin 
alphabet.  Dr.  Taylor  further  says : 

"  The  alphabet  of  the  Koran  is  now  the  chief  commer 
cial  alphabet  of  the  East ;  it  constitutes  the  official  script 
by  means  of  which  three  Asiatic  empires  are  ruled,  and 
has  been  adapted  to  express  the  peculiar  sounds  of  lan 
guages  of  the  most  varied  type — Arabic,  Turkic,  Per 
sian,  Pushti,  Beluchi,  Hindostani,  and  Malay.  That  the 
local  alphabet  of  Mecca  should  have  exterminated  all 
other  Semitic  scripts  and  have  established  itself  as  the 
dominant  alphabet  of  Africa  and  Asia,  is  an  illustration 
more  striking  than  any  other  that  can  be  adduced  of  the 
power  of  religious  influences  in  effecting  a  wide  and 
rapid  diffusion  of  alphabets." 

Dr.  Taylor  in  these  remarks  possibly  over 
looks  the  fact  that  it  is  doubtful  whether 
Mohammed  himself  was  able  to  read  or  write. 
He  also  overlooks  the  real  power  in  this  case, 
which  was  that  of  the  sword.  That  has  been 
a  more  potent  influence  than  any  other  power 
in  propagating  language.  In  Mohammed's 
time,  prayer  took  the  form  of  military  exer 
cises.  Brother  would  have  slain  brother,  had 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     23 

the  Prophet  willed  it.  Conquest  came  through 
Mohammed  and  his  successors  by  the  sword 
first  and  for  Arabic  afterwards.  "  It  was  in 
the  mosque,  where  the  use  of  the  sword  was 
deified,  that  the  Moslems  acquired  the  esprit 
de  corps  and  that  rigid  discipline  which  dis 
tinguished  their  armies."  "  Aggressiveness," 
Prof.  Wellhausen  says,  "  was  in  the  blood  of 
Mohammed  and  his  followers  and  successors." 
"  There  is  no  question,"  says  the  same  author 
ity,  "  that  the  material  success  of  Islam  was 
the  chief  force  that  attracted  new  adherents. 
The  unique  sovereignty  of  Allah  was  induced 
by  the  fact  that  no  might  could  withstand  his. 
In  spreading,  by  means  of  the  sword,  the  wor 
ship  of  Allah,  rich  booty  was  gained." 

Practically,  Arabic  had  little  or  no  litera 
ture  until  the  sword  forced  nation  after  nation 
under  its  influence.  The  Arabs  were  greatly 
elevated  by  becoming  the  pupils  of  the  na 
tions  they  conquered.  Every  man  able  to 
bear  arms  was  bound  to  render  military  ser 
vice.  The  respect,  admiration,  and  awe  which 
mankind  has  always  yielded  to  military  con 
querors  have  a  deeper  foundation  and  a  higher 
reason  than  appears  on  the  surface.  To  be 
conquered  physically  largely  means  to  be  con 
quered  mentally,  in  soul  as  well  as  in  body. 


24     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

If  a  conquered  people  are  elevated  intellec 
tually  above  their  victors,  they  are  thereby 
enabled  to  some  extent  to  parry  the  effects  of 
their  degradation.  The  mind  and  the  pen 
have  ultimately  in  all  ages  been  mightier 
than  the  sword.  But  this  elevation  and  supe 
riority  always  preceded  and  never  followed 
conquest;  at  least  until  the  conquered  people 
had  long  subsequently  achieved  independence. 
The  Mantchus,  who  conquered  the  Chinese, 
were  a  people  of  no  mental  culture  whatever, 
while  the  Chinese  are,  after  the  Brahrninic 
Hindoos,  the  most  cultured  nation  of  Asia. 
China,  indeed,  it  is  claimed,  is  one  vast  library. 
The  imperial  catalogue  of  national  literature 
forms  one  hundred  and  twelve  octavo  volumes 
of  three  hundred  pages  each.  Macaulay  speaks 
of  the  immortality  of  the  Strulbrugs  as  repre 
senting  Chinese  civilization ;  but  in  this  he  was 
greatly  mistaken.  The  Abbe  Hue,  the  best 
authority  on  China,  says:  "  From  about  1644, 
China  went  through  fifteen  changes  of  dynas 
ties,  all  accomplished  by  bloody  revolutions 
and  civil  wars.  This  means  anything  but 
political  or  mental  stagnation.  Kepeatedly 
subjected  to  foreign  domination,  China  has 
always  vanquished  her  conquerors,  compelling 
them  implicitly  to  adopt  her  civilization  and 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     25 

respect  and  maintain  her  institutions."  She 
was  still,  however,  degraded  by  conquest.  The 
shaving  of  the  head  and  wearing  of  the  pig 
tail  are  evidences  of  servitude  imposed  by  her 
present  masters. 

The  Chinese  have  no  true  alphabet.  They 
have  two  hundred  and  thirty-four  key  charac 
ters,  each  of  which  is  a  monosyllable.  There 
are  about  one  hundred  thousand  words  in  their 
vocabulary.  This  large  stock  of  words,  in  an 
uninflected  language,  is  formed  by  joining 
syllable  to  syllable.  Instead  of  saying  parents, 
they  say  father-mother.  The  word  average  is 
expressed  by  not-greatness,  not-smallness  ;  brother- 
brother  is  oldest  brother;  lady-lady  is  great  lady. 
A  man  may  trade  with  unequaled  success 
on  a  small  capital  of  words  in  Chinese.  Sir 
George  Stanton  says  the  Chinese  penal  stat 
utes  are  all  written  in  eight  hundred  words. 
This  is  remarkable  when  it  is  remembered 
that  in  China  all  laws  are  penal. 

The  language  of  a  nation,  more  than  any 
thing  else,  shows  the  genius  of  the  people.  No 
nation  of  the  earth  has  accomplished  so  much 
in  the  arts,  mechanics,  and  agriculture  with 
such  small  material  as  the  Chinese.  This  is 
especially  true  of  them  in  the  art  of  arts, 
agriculture,  and  is  still  more  true  of  what  they 


26     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

have  accomplished  in  language.  Their  lan 
guage  is  yet  in  the  rudeness  of  infancy  —  the 
isolating  stage,  —  and  yet  no  nation  of  the 
earth,  perhaps,  can  point  to  a  more  extensive 
literature.  Its  quality,  too,  is  worthy  of  ad 
miration,  judged  even  by  the  highest  civilized 
standard. 

The  triumphs  of  a  nation,  either  in  the  mil 
itary,  literary,  scientific,  or  mechanical  sense, 
mean  triumphs  for  its  language  and  literature. 
But  where  there  has  always  been  mental  stag 
nation  and  physical  isolation,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Tartars,  a  people  may  overrun  and  de 
stroy  surrounding  nations  and  yet  themselves 
remain  in  barbarism.  Genghis  Khan  left  to 
his  successors,  an  empire  which  extended  from 
the  China  Sea  to  the  Dnieper,  and  yet  he  im 
pressed  nothing  whatever  on  the  nations  he 
conquered  but  the  remembrance  of  his  horri 
ble  massacres.  After  Tartar  conquest  and 
massacres,  it  was  said  that  "  no  eye  remained 
open  to  weep  for  the  dead."  Note,  however, 
that  the  word  Mongol  is  from  the  root  mong, 
which  means  brave.  They  had  bravery,  and 
that  only. 

English  soldiers  have  been  conquerors  every 
where,  and,  behind  wooden  walls,  English 
seamen  won  immortal  victories;  while  her 


THE    ALPHABET    AND     LANGUAGE.  27 

navigators  discovered  almost  innumerable 
islands,  and  what  is  believed  to  be  an  Ant 
arctic  continent.  The  ships  of  her  merchants 
and  mercantile  adventurers  have  fretted  all 
seas.  The  English  language  would  not  now 
be  what  it  is  —  mentally  and  philologically 
the  most  perfect  and  most  conquering  lan 
guage  of  the  earth  —  but  for  these  facts.  Yet 
there  was  a  time,  lasting  for  about  three  hun 
dred  years  after  the  Norman  conquest,  when 
the  Anglo-Saxon  language  was  in  the  utmost 
danger  of  obliteration.  It  is  asserted  by  Ma- 
caulay  that  it  would  have  perished  but  for 
the  separation  from  France,  through  fortunate 
failure  to  conquer  that  country. 

Queen  Mary  said  that  if  her  heart  was 
examined  after  death  Calais  would  be  found 
written  on  it,  so  deeply  did  its  loss  affect  her. 
But  its  loss,  and  that  of  all  France  to  English 
arms,  was  a  vital  gain  to  English  language 
and  literature.  After  the  Norman  conquest, 
the  Saxon  language  and  literature  went  into 
bondage  with  the  Saxon  people.  Saxon  and 
Norman  words  fought  as  fiercely  for  supremacy 
as  Norman  and  Saxon  men.  When,  finally,  the 
two  people  began  to  coalesce  on  terms  of  equal 
ity,  and  to  become  brother  Englishmen,  the 
language  showed  —  nay,  still  shows,  —  native 


28     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

losses  then  suffered.  Halliwell's  dictionary  of 
archaic  and  provincial  words  contains  over 
fifty  thousand  words  not  recorded  in  modern 
dictionaries.  Saxon  grammar  remained  com 
paratively  intact — for  grammar,  called  the 
blood  and  soul  of  language,  is  nearly  indes 
tructible  ;  but  Saxon  words  and  Saxon  inflec 
tions  both  suffered,  and  that  in  their  best  ele 
ments,  too,  —  the  language  of  poetry  and  of  the 
affections,  of  the  marketplace  and  of  the  home. 
Unquestionably,  our  English  vocabulary  is  far 
richer  and  more  copious,  especially  in  the 
technical  terms  used  in  astronomy,  botany, 
mineralogy,  chemistry,  etc.,  for  the  additions 
it  received  from  the  Normans.  French  words 
were  first  blended  with  Anglo-Saxon  by  the 
genius  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser ;  but  the  addi 
tions  were  so  abundant,  so  overflowing  in 
number,  and  in  many  cases  so  superfluous, 
that  those  made  then  and  since  were  not  so 
much  additions  as  the  adding  of  a  new  lan 
guage  to  English,  an  addition  that  prevented 
the  growth  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  remitted  to 
obscurity  many  words  the  loss  of  which  is 
ever  to  be  regretted,  and  can  never  wholly 
be  atoned.  There  is  one  comforting  fact, 
however ;  words  of  French  origin,  often  unre- 
gretted,  drop  out  of  use  and  are  never  restored 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     29 

to  verbal  circulation  again;  whereas,  if  a 
homely  but  earnest  Anglo-Saxon  word  drops 
out  of  use,  its  loss  is  regretted,  and  it  is  fre 
quently  restored  and  always  welcomed  back. 

The  highest,  the  most  spiritual,  the  most 
mysterious  thing  about  man  is  his  speech.  It 
is  a  remarkable  fact  that  nothing  can  be  added 
to  or  subtracted  from  the  body  of  any  lan 
guage.  The  language  may  be  nearly  obliter 
ated  by  conquest,  as  was  the  Ancient  Celtic 
and  others  herein  named,  but  it  cannot  be 
changed.  Every  language,  no  matter  how 
barbarous,  is  complete  in  itself.  No  such  thing 
is  known  as  a  language  in  transition.  Forms 
change;  even  the  roots  of  a  language  may  be 
disguised,  but  they  cannot  possibly  be  altered 
— their  essential  element,  their  fundamental 
meaning,  survives  all  change.  Roots  predi 
cative  and  roots  demonstrative  remain,  as  Max 
Muller  asserts,  as  the  ultimate  analysis  of  all 
language.  The  Hindoos  were  the  first  to  trace 
all  words  back  to  roots.  Prof.  Max  Muller 
claims  that  all  of  the  words,  numbering  at 
least  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  in  the 
English  dictionary,  whether  of  native  or  im 
ported  speech,  the  near  and  far  alike,  can  be 
traced  back  to  eight  hundred  roots,  and  these 
to  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  fundamental 


30     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 
I 

ideas  or  concepts.  From  this  latter  original 
stock  have  been  forged  words  and  meaning 
enough  to  give  expression  to  every  thought 
that  ever  passed  through  the  mind  of  man. 
Never  before  did  man  erect  so  divine  a  temple 
from  such  apparently  insignificant  materials. 
Never  did  he  appear  so  godlike  as  in  thus 
forging  the  thunderbolts  of  speech.  Here, 
if  ever,  he  wielded  the  powers  of  Jupiter 
Tonans. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  and  one  tending 
to  the  glory  of  mental  democracy,  that  the 
great  works  of  the  imagination  and  of  poetry 
were  produced  by  men  nearly  innocent  of 
schools  and  scholarship.  Homer,  Shakespeare, 
Cervantes,  De  Foe,  Bunyan,  Goldsmith,  Burns, 
and  Abraham  Lincoln  were  all  self-taught 
men,  and  nearly  all  spoke  one  language  only. 
So,  too,  measured  by  our  almost  immeasurably 
extended  standard,  were  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles, 
Euripides,  and  Aristophanes.  If  Milton  had 
not  been  a  schoolman,  he  would  probably  have 
been  an  immeasurably  greater,  because  an  un 
conscious,  poet.  This  fact  he  himself  recog 
nized.  Macaulay  doubted  that  we  should  have 
had  Lear  if  Shakespeare  had  been  able  to  read 
Sophocles  in  Greek.  The  very  best  and  most 
earnest  words  in  the  four  great  languages  of 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     31 

the  world  —  Greek,  Latin,  German,  and  Eng 
lish —  came  from  the  common  people.  The 
language  of  Luther,  of  the  English  Bible,  and 
of  Shakespeare,  was  in  each  case  a  language 
that  the  unlearned  used  and  could  under 
stand.  The  best  words  of  the  Attic  dialect, 
the  lingua  Romana,  and  the  mother  tongue  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  were  all  not  only  coined,  but 
long  circulated  first  amongst  the  common  peo 
ple.  The  French  Academy,  composed  of  the 
mental  and  scientific  rulers  of  France,  never 
gave  a  word  to  the  French  language;  street 
gamins  and  peasants  are  constantly  adding  to 
it;  they  first  stamp  the  words  as  being  of  ster 
ling  philological  value,  and  the  learned  finally, 
and  often  most  unwillingly,  come  to  their  use. 
When  a  language  became  a  dead  one,  it  was 
always  killed  by  the  over-culture  of  the  learned, 
as  the  dressing  of  wheat  in  milling  deprives 
it  of  the  material  from  which  bone  and  mus 
cle — the  pillars  of  the  human  body — are  erect 
ed.  The  best  and  most  forcible,  the  most  ear 
nest,  and  most  truthful  language  is  democratic 
rather  than  aristocratic.  Dante  was  a  scholar, 
and  his  immortal  work  may  seem  to  contradict 
these  statements;  but  in  his  Divine  Comedy  he 
used,  though,  of  course,  he  sometimes  refined, 
the  dialect  of  peasants  and  market-women. 


32     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

Macaulay's  tribute  to  Dante  was,  perhaps,  the 
highest  ever  paid  to  a  latter-day  author: 
"  Dante,"  he  says,  "  used  the  fewest  and  best 
words  it  is  possible  to  use." 

The  highest  and  best  meaning  of  words  is 
not  found  in  dictionaries,  where  the  words  are 
disconnected,  but  in  the  best  authors,  who,  by 
the  exercise  of  one  of  the  highest  gifts  of  genius, 
place  words  in  such  living  and  happy  combi 
nations  that,  married  in  sentences,  they  produce 
mental  pictures  from  which  are  derived  at 
once  the  greatest  mental  profit  and  the  highest 
mental  pleasure.  A  word  standing  alone  is  but 
the  link  of  a  chain ;  its  greatest  strength  and 
highest  use  can  be  attained  only  by  combina 
tion.  Genius  only  can  in  such  cases  link  and 
combine  words  to  produce  the  happiest  and 
best  results  of  meaning.  On  this  subject 
Marsh  says :  "  Dictionary  definitions,  consid 
ered  as  a  means  of  philological  instruction, 
are  as  inferior  to  miscellaneous  reading  as  a 
herbarium  to  a  botanic  garden.  The  vocabu 
lary  of  the  passions  and  the  affections  lives 
and  breathes  only  in  mutual  combinations." 
In  the  selection  of  the  very  best  words  to  ex 
press  in  poetry  the  warmest  feelings  of  the 
heart  and  highest  mental  powers,  Chaucer 
rendered  higher  service  than  any  other  Eng- 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     33 

lishman.  And  yet,  if  he  had  been  more  of  the 
people  and  less  of  the  court,  there  would  have 
been  much  more  Anglo-Saxon  in  English  than 
there  now  is;  the  language,  indeed,  would 
have  been  almost  radically  different.  No  one 
affects  a  language  like  a  great  poet.  God  and 
great  poets,  say  the  Italians,  are  the  only 
creators.  Shakespeare  and  the  translators  of 
the  Bible  were  greatly  indebted  to  Chaucer. 
Marsh  calls  him  "the  Charlemagne  of  the 
new  intellectual  dynasty  of  England.  He 
unites  what  was  best  in  Latin  and  Anglo-Saxon 
words,  and  produced  a  polyglottic  vocabulary 
which  is  superior  to  that  of  either  language 
separately."  In  this  connection,  note  how  the 
Bible  is  the  Book,  in  another  than  the  Chris 
tian  sense.  Macaulay  says  of  it :  "  At  the  time 
when  that  odious  style  which  deforms  the 
writings  of  Hall  and  Lord  Bacon  was  almost 
universal,  appeared  that  stupendous  work,  the 
English  Bible,  a  book  which,  if  everything 
else  in  our  language  should  perish,  would  alone 
suffice  to  show  the  whole  extent  of  its  beauty 
and  power."  It  has  been  frequently  said  that 
the  translators  of  the  Bible  were  inspired. 
Our  greatest  translation,  that  of  the  time  of 
King  James,  was  made  in  the  language  of  the 
common  people.  If  the  claim  of  inspiration 


34     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

rested  only  upon  that  fact,  which,  of  course,  it 
does  not,  then  the  Latin  proverb,  "  Vox  populi, 
vox  Dei"  ("The  voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice 
of  God,")  would  be  true  in  a  higher  sense 
than  that  in  which  it  has  been  generally  un 
derstood.  And  there  are  high  and  valid  phil 
ological  reasons  why  this  is  so.  The  language 
of  the  common  people  is  closest  to  nature  — 
material  nature, —  in  which,  it  cannot  be  too 
firmly  remembered,  the  foundations  on  which 
all  that  is  best,  most  vital,  and  truthful  in  all 
languages  are  laid.  Therefore,  he  who  used 
the  people's  language  used  the  highest,  be 
cause  the  most  natural,  simple,  and  powerful 
language  with  which  man's  attention  can  be 
aroused,  his  reason  convinced,  his  affections 
and  mental  and  spiritual  powers  led  captive. 
Nature  here  means  —  as  she,  indeed,  always 
does  mean  —  earnestness,  truth,  simplicity, 
beauty  and  power. 

One  of  the  most  noticeable,  and  yet  one  of 
the  most  natural,  facts  about  such  a  mental 
man  of  men  as  Shakespeare,  is  that  no  author, 
poet,  or  dramatist  has  ever  imitated,  or  even 
tried  to  imitate,  his  style.  The  attempt  has 
not  been  made,  and  if  made,  could  not  hope 
to  attain  even  that  success  which  the  maker 
of  artificial  fruit  and  flowers  achieves.  In 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     35 

making  them,  form  and  color  may  at  least  be 
mechanically  imitated;  but  none  of  Shakes 
peare's  greatest  qualities  are  imitable.  In 
this  respect  he  is  alone,  with  all  of  the  authors 
of  the  world  surrounding  him.  Shakespeare's 
language,  simple  though  its  general  character 
istic  is,  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  features 
that  stamp  him  as  "  not  for  a  day,  but  for  all 
time." 

One  of  the  strongest  illustrations  of  how 
people  can  be  degraded  in  a  moral  and  philo 
logical  sense,  while  they  were  ardently  devoted 
to  literary  and  artistic  progress,  is  afforded  by 
the  Italian  Renaissance.  Sculpture,  architec 
ture,  painting,  poetry,  and  general  literature 
never  won  more  astonishing  triumphs  than 
in  that  era  —  not  even  in  the  Golden  Age  of 
Greece.  Petrarch  was  crowned  with  greater 
honors  than  are  accorded  to  a  military  con 
queror.  Michel  Angelo  was  an  autocrat  who 
dictated  terms  to  a  tyrannical  Pope.  Lorenzo 
de  Medici  was  called  the  Magnificent,  far  more 
for  his  mental  ability  and  culture,  his  patron 
age  of  art  and  learning,  and  his  devotion  to 
the  discovery  of  ancient  manuscripts  illus 
trating  classical  learning,  than  for  his  enor 
mous  wealth,  his  remarkable  abilities  as  a 
ruler,  and  his  lovableness  as  a  man. 


36     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

But  while  Italy  was  thus  exalted  in  a  liter 
ary  and  artistic  sense,  it  was  never  more 
degraded  morally.  Such  personages  as  the 
Borgias,  Pazzis,  and  Machiavellis  were  guilty 
of  murder  by  poisoning  and  other  forms  of 
assassination,  and  of  adultery  and  incest,  or 
else  defended  these  crimes.  They  lied  and 
deceived  with  a  countenance  indicative  of  the 
utmost  candor,  and  with  a  boldness  that 
would  have  deceived  the  closest  reader  of 
faces  and  actions.  These  were  the  leaders  in 
art  and  literature,  no  less  than  the  rulers 
in  the  government  and  social  life.  In  the 
debasement  which  they  created,  language 
suffered  in  a  vital,  because  a  moral,  sense. 

A  wretch,  an  assassin  who  stabbed  swiftly, 
unexpectedly,  and  devilishly,  was  a  bravo, 
a  brave  man, —  and  he  was  brave,  compared 
to  those  who  hired  him.  A  devotee  of  music, 
art,  or  of  learning,  was,  and  is  yet,  a  virtuoso, 
devoted  to  the  virtues,  although  his  private 
life  may  have  been  black  and  despicable.  A 
prostitute  or  mistress  had  her  sin  removed,  in 
the  social  and  legal  sense  at  least,  in  the 
knowledge  that  society  attached  no  stigma 
either  to  her  name  or  conduct.  A  bastard 
inherited  equally  with  legitimate  children. 
The  Italian  language  yet  bears  strong  traces 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     37 

of  this  moral  debasement  and  of  the  crushing 
despotism  to  which  the  people's  liberties  were 
then  and  have  until  lately  been  subjected. 
Grandiloquent  terms  are  used  for  the  most 
trifling  articles,  and  an  obsequiousness  of 
thanks  akin  to  crawling  is  returned  for  the 
most  trifling  favors.  Leigh  Hunt  gives  many 
painful  philological  illustrations  of  these  facts. 
Such  exaggeration  and  obsequiousness  of  lan 
guage  has  in  it  no  sincerity,  no  heart,  and  is 
born  at  once  of  the  degraded  condition  of 
those  who  use  it  and  of  their  poverty.  The 
Russians  of  to-day  are  a  nation  of  shameless 
liars,  because  they  are  cowed  by  despotism. 
Lying  and  debasement  of  language  in  such 
cases  are  not  to  be  so  harshly  judged  as  in  a 
land  of  mental  light  and  liberty.  Lying  is  a 
refuge  of  the  weak  and  oppressed  —  "  the  vice 
of  slaves,"  as  it  is  termed  by  Plutarch. 

Language  always  conforms  to  the  institu 
tions  of  the  country  in  which  it  is  spoken. 
Asiatic  lands  furnish  the  strongest  illustration 
of  this  principle.  The  dull,  oppressed  native 
Hindoo,  not  figuratively  or  partially,  but  ac 
tually  and  wholly,  crawled  before  his  superior, 
in  a  monetary  or  social  sense ;  and  his  language 
partook  of  and  reflected  his  degradation.  The 
punishment  prescribed  in  the  Hindoo  Vedas 


38     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

for  a  Sudra  who  attempted  either  to  hear  a 
priest  recite  or  to  raise  himself  in  any  way 
above  his  utterly  sunken  condition  was  to  the 
last  degree  cruel  and  arbitrary.  The  Sudras 
are  the  farmers  and  workers  of  India.  They 
composed  three-fourths  of  the  natives  of  that 
country.  As  a  consequence,  their  language  is 
as  much  a  pariah  and  a  product  of  poverty  of 
mind  and  spirit,  and  of  utter  degradation, 
ignorance,  and  poverty,  as  they  themselves. 
The  Gypsy  language  and  grammar  equally 
illustrate  the  effect  of  ages  of  roaming  va 
grancy  and  illiteracy. 

The  nation  that  enjoys  an  upright,  self- 
asserting,  self-respecting  use  of  words  must 
have  successfully  demonstrated  its  courage 
before  domestic  and  foreign  tyrants,  and  be  in 
the  van  of  national  progress  and  of  mental 
light  and  physical  liberty.  If  it  loses  the  lat 
ter,  it  must  to  some  extent  lose  its  language, 
in  the  highest  and  best  sense.  The  decline  of 
Home,  in  the  sense  of  a  fall  of  its  liberties,  is 
generally  dated  from  the  time  of  Marius,  Sulla, 
Pompey,  Crassus,  and  Julius  Csesar.  But  that 
fall  really  began  after  the  second  Punic  War ; 
and  it  is  an  historical  fact,  related  by  Polybius, 
that  the  Roman  of  his  day  could  not  read  the 
treaties  between  Rome  and  Carthage,  so  great 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     39 

had  been  the  changes  in  Latin.  The  lan 
guage,  like  the  people,  had  lost  the  ancient 
earnestness,  truth,  and  simplicity.  It  had 
gained  in  copiousness  of  vocabulary;  but  this 
gain  was  paid  for  by  loss  of  simplicity  and 
virility,  in  the  moral  and  social  sense.  The 
Apostle  Paul  charged  certain  professors  with 
having  a  form  of  godliness,  but  denying  the 
power  thereof.  Language,  in  like  manner, 
may  retain  the  form,  the  words,  while  the 
truth,  life,  earnestness,  and  simplicity — the 
soul,  in  short, —  has  departed.  It  may  have 
a  name  to  live,  while  it  is  radically  dead. 

The  reign  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  has  been 
called,  and  very  justly,  the  Augustan  age  of 
French  literature.  Authors  in  both  those 
ages  were  subsidized  to  write  or  sing  the 
glories  of  despots.  But  literature  and  art, 
shackled  by  royal  bounties  and  the  prosti 
tution  born  of  them,  were  largely  marked 
by  toadyism  and  the  loss  of  life  thereby  cre 
ated.  The  king  named  was  treated  always 
as  a  deity.  Those  who  have  seen  the  paint 
ings  still  remaining  on  the  walls  of  Ver 
sailles  know  this.  The  king  once  removed 
an  official,  who,  wishing  to  regain  royal  favor, 
addressed  the  words  of  the  fifty-first  Psalm  to 
him,  "  Cast  me  not  away  from  Thy  presence, 


40     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

and  take  not  Thy  Holy  Spirit  from  me."     On 
this  subject,  Buckle  says : 

"  The  French,  in  spite  of  the  heroic  efforts  of  the  Fronde, 
not  only  fell  under  the  despotism  of  Louis  the  Four 
teenth,  but  never  even  cared  to  resist  it,  and  at  length, 
becoming  slaves  in  their  souls  as  well  as  in  their  bodies, 
they  grew  proud  of  a  condition  which  the  meanest  Eng 
lishman  would  have  spurned  as  an  intolerable  bondage. 
As  if  to  exhaust  every  form  of  absurdity,  the  most  seri 
ous  misunderstanding  arose  as  to  who  should  have  the 
honor  of  giving  the  king  his  napkin  as  he  sat  at  meals, 
and  who  was  to  enjoy  the  inestimable  privilege  of  help 
ing  the  queen  on  with  her  shift.  It  should  be  remem 
bered  that  these  occurrences,  and  above  all  the  impor 
tance  formerly  attached  to  them,  is  part  of  the  history  of 
the  French  mind.  The  end  of  this  was  a  corruption,  a 
servility,  and  a  loss  of  power  more  complete  than  has  ever 
been  witnessed  in  any  of  the  great  countries  of  Europe." 

Words  can  have  their  dignity  wantonly 
insulted  and  lowered  by  intentional  misuse. 
Lex,  as  is  well  known,  means  law  in  Latin,  and 
Rex,  king.  Some  one,  Laud  or  Strafford,  aid 
ing  Charles  the  First  in  his  attempt  to  make 
himself  superior  to  law,  said  that  he  had  often 
heard  that  rex  was  lex,  but  that  he  never  be 
fore  heard  that  lex  was  rex.  This  doctrine 
was  derived  from  James  the  First,  who  laid 
down  the  despotic  maxim,  A  Dio  rex,  a  rege  lex. 
War  was  fought  to  settle  the  meaning  of  the 
two  words  first  named.  The  result  showed  all 
law-breakers,  king  as  well  as  subject,  that  law 
was  king  of  kings  in  England.  The  English 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     41 

language  no  less  than  English  liberty  was 
vitally  interested  in  this  contest.  Note,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  utter  degradation  of  a  coun 
try  where  the  king  was  not  only  the  law  tem 
poral  but  spiritual.  Of  Philip  the  Second,  a 
contemporary,  struck  by  the  universal  homage 
he  received,  said :  "  The  Spanish  people  do 
not  merely  love,  merely  reverence,  but  abso 
lutely  adore  him,  and  deem  his  commands  so 
sacred  that  they  could  not  be  violated  without 
offense  to  God."  Loyalty  and  superstition  went 
hand  in  hand  in  Spain ;  ignorance  ruled,  and 
language  was  necessarily  degraded. 

The  English  aristocracy  was  greatly  de 
graded  in  the  reign  of  the  heartless,  corrupt, 
immoral,  and  wholly  unpatriotic  Charles  the 
Second.  Lords  and  other  aristocrats  acted  as 
waiters  on  their  knees,  in  serving  the  king 
at  table.  French  manners  and  customs  were 
slavishly  followed  by  king  and  courtiers. 
Literature  was  very  much  debased  also,  but 
this  debasement  did  not  extend  to  the  com 
mon  people ;  and,  therefore,  language  did  not 
suffer  materially,  nor  national  progress  either, 
in  a  legislative  sense  at  least, —  for  some  of 
the  best  laws  preservative  of  the  freedom 
of  the  people  and  press  were  passed  in  that 
reign.  What  was  true  of  public  men  and 


0? 


42     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

literature  in  the  time  of  Charles  remained 
more  or  less  true  during  all  the  succeed 
ing  reigns,  until  late  in  George  the  Third's 
time.  If  the  works  of  a  majority  of  authors 
of  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second,  James,  and 
William  and  Mary  could  be  blotted  out,  lan 
guage  would  suffer  little  loss,  while  clean 
literature  would  be  a  decided  gainer.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  dramatic  works  and 
poetry,  so-called. 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  George  the 
Third  as  having  been  a  tyrant,  only  or  mostly 
in  his  treatment  of  the  American  colonies, 
which  he  first  exasperated  into  rebellion, 
and  thereby  finally  ennobled  into  independ 
ence;  but,  in  his  home  policy,  he  really 
struck  at  English  liberty  and  the  English 
language  even  more  fatally,  had  he  succeeded 
in  striking  successfully.  In  1771,  writing  to 
Lord  North  on  the  subject  of  publishing  par 
liamentary  debates  (the  people  being  desirous 
of  knowing  what  their  law-makers  were  do 
ing),  he  said :  "  It  is  highly  necessary  that  this 
strange  and  careless  method  of  publishing- 
debates  should  be  put  a  stop  to.  But  is  not 
the  House  of  Lords  the  best  court  to  bring 
such  miscreants  before ;  as  it  can  fine  as  well 
as  imprison,  and  has  broader  shoulders  to 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     43 

support  the  odium  of  so  salutary  a  measure?" 
Now,  had  this  weak  and  tyrannical  king  suc 
ceeded  in  suppressing  the  publication  of  par 
liamentary  reports,  the  word  miscreant  would 
have  acquired  two  new  meanings.  From  the 
king's  and  his  abettors'  side  it  would  have 
meant  those  who  were  guilty  of  the  crime,  in 
their  eyes,  of  wanting  to  know  what  Parliament 
was  doing,  while  from  the  people's  side  it  would 
have  meant  those  who  were  opposed  to  tyranm^. 
Buckle  says :  "  Every  liberal  sentiment,  every 
thing  approaching  to  reform  —  nay,  even  the 
mere  mention  of  inquiry, —  was  abomination  in 
the  eyes  of  that  narrow  and  ignorant  prince." 
The  right  to  prevent  meetings  was  lodged  in 
an  irresponsible  appointee  of  the  crown.  If  a 
meeting  of  even  twelve  persons  persisted  in 
discussing  public  questions  for  an  hour  after 
a  magistrate  ordered  them  to  disperse,  the 
penalty  was  death.  It  is  alleged  that  the 
word  independence,  in  its  modern  acceptation, 
does  not  occur  in  our  language  before  the 
early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Ser 
vile  imitation  of  the  French  was  the  fashion 
during  a  large  part  of  the  long  period  named, 
and  words  of  Latin  or  French  origin  were 
very  much  used.  Professor  Morley  says  of 
De  Foe:  "He  also  reformed  the  currency  of 


44     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

English  speech,  which  in  his  time  had  been 
lowered  by  French  alloy."  Literary  feeble 
ness  was  then  long  married  to  immorality. 
Tawdry  images  were  much  used  in  the  de 
scription  of  natural  objects.  Nearly  every 
thing  was  unnatural,  soulless,  and  insincere  — 
utterly  foreign  to  the  genius  and  spirit  of  what 
is  best  in  English  language  and  literature. 

It  is  well  known  that  all  European  languages 
are  derived  from  the  Aryan  speech,  which  came 
from  the  highlands  of  Asia.  Professor  Sayce 
attempted  to  prove  that  this  speech  came  from 
the  north  of  Europe ;  but  he  himself  has  aban 
doned  that  theory,  I  believe.  The  word  Aryan 
is  from  the  root  ar,  one  of  whose  fundamental 
meanings  is  to  plow.  A  plowing,  an  agricul 
tural  people  were  superior  to  those  who  lived 
by  pastoral  pursuits  or  by  hunting. 

In  its  wealth  of  words,  modern  English  is 
one  of  the  most  composite  of  languages.  The 
Latin  or  Norman  words,  of  course,  vastly  pre 
ponderate  over  other  foreign  elements  in  its 
vocabulary.  This  element  represents  probably 
one-third  of  the  words  in  the  English  diction 
ary  ;  but  English-speaking  people,  having  been 
foremost  in  exploration,  and  the  greatest  in 
maritime  and  inland  conquest  and  commer 
cial  enterprise,  their  language  has  thereby  had 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     45 

a  larger  number  of  foreign  words  admitted  to 
its  stock  of  vocables  than  any  other  language. 
It  is  a  striking  fact  that  the  intellectual  revival 
in  England,  from  1485  to  1600,  was  simulta 
neous  with  maritime  discovery,  military  and 
naval  conquests,  and  mercantile  adventure. 
The  foreign  words  introduced  into  English 
then  and  since  have  been  naturalized  into  the 
body  of  the  language,  and  had  the  bridle  of  its 
grammar  imposed  upon  them  ;  but  they  are 
still  not  of  the  household.  Anglo-Saxon  would 
be  much  poorer  in  words  relating  to  the  arts, 
sciences,  and  jurisprudence  if  it  had  not  been 
for  a  long  period  dominated  by  the  Norman 
tongue;  but  if  this  mastery  had  never  oc 
curred,  it  would  be  richer  in  words  expressive 
of  truth,  of  the  home  affections  and  duties, 
and  of  morals  and  religion.  Its  richness,  for 
the  highest  and  best  poetical  uses,  would  like 
wise  have  been  greater.  Even  as  it  is,  how 
ever,  it  is  the  most  richly  endowed,  in  its  own 
still  preserved  native  resources,  of  any  lan 
guage  of  the  world.  That  wealth  was  best 
illustrated  in  immeasurably  the  greatest  era  of 
its  history,  between  the  beginning  of  the  reign 
of  Henry  the  Eighth  and  the  close  of  that  of 
James  the  First. 

Latin  and   Greek  have  much  greater  con- 


46     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

ciseness  of  expression  than  English,  because 
they  are  fully  inflected  languages,  while  Eng 
lish  is  most  like  to  Chinese,  which  is  wholly 
uninflected.  English,  too,  is  constantly  be 
coming  more  uninflected,  brief,  and  direct.  Its 
constant  tendency  is  to  abolish  genders,  tenses, 
and  degrees  of  comparison.  Its  collocation  and 
arrangement  of  prepositions,  nouns,  and  verbs 
are  shorter,  stronger,  clearer,  and  more  unalter 
able  in  expression  than  either  Latin,  Greek  or 
German.  It  dispenses  with  inflections  almost 
entirely,  and  relies  instead  on  the  collocation 
or  syntax  —  that  is,  on  the  relative  position  of 
words  in  sentences.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the 
English  language  is  unconsciously  but  certainly 
approaching  to  Chinese,  which  is  the  simplest 
and  most  philosophical  language  in  the  world. 
Max  Miiller  calls  Chinese  a  language  comme 
il  faut  —  that  is,  a  language  as  it  should  be. 
On  this  subject,  Professor  Sayce  says :  "  If  the 
excellence  of  a  language  is  to  be  decided  by 
the  attainment  of  terseness  and  vividness, 
Chinese  would  come  to  the  front.  English  has 
fitted  itself  to  become  a  universal  language,  by 
struggling  to  assimilate  its  condition  to  that 
of  Chinese."  In  these  facts,  which  are  facts  of 
brevity,  simplicity,  and  constant  tendency  to 
abolish  grammar,  lie  one  of  the  chief  claims 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     47 

of  English  to  becoming  a  universal  language. 
Professor  Sayce  says:  "The  prophecy  has 
already  been  hazarded  that  Pigeon-English, 
or  a  similar  grarnmarless  jargon,  will  be  the 
future  medium  of  universal  intercourse."  If 
some  European  language  is  to  be  acquired  by 
Oriental  and  savage  people,  their  language  will 
undoubtedly  be  English,  even  if  the  oppor 
tunity  offered  them  to  acquire  French,  Italian, 
or  German  were  equally  good,  and  the  reason 
for  the  choice  of  English  would  lie  in  the  facts 
stated.  "The  English  language,"  says  Pro 
fessor  Sayce,  "  is  quite  as  good  an  instrument 
of  thought  as  Sanscrit  or  Greek,  and  yet  Eng 
lish  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  inflectional  in  the 
way  that  Sanscrit  and  Greek  are."  If  the  world 
is  to  have  a  universal  language,  it  will  not  be, 
by  whatever  else  it  may  be  characterized,  a 
language  of  concealment,  but  one  of  naked 
simplicity  and  directness,  both  in  expression 
and  meaning.  Earnestness  will  also  be  one  of 
its  striking  characteristics.  If  that  universal 
language  is  to  be  the  English,  words  of  Ro 
mance  origin  will  no  longer  form,  as  they  now 
do,  about  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  vocabulary 
used,  but  will  dwindle  down  to  three,  four,  or 
five  per  cent.  It  may  be  stated,  as  a  fact  indi 
cative  of  progress  in  this  direction,  that,  though 


48     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

words  of  foreign  derivation  have  vastly  in 
creased,  in  the  extension  and  cultivation  of 
chemistry,  mineralogy,  metallurgy,  and  in  the 
arts  and  sciences  generally,  the  number  of  such 
words  used  in  general  English  literature  is  now 
about  twenty-five  per  cent,  less  than  in  the  age 
of  Queen  Anne.  In  the  vocabulary  of  an  or 
dinary  speaker,  every  word  of  Anglo-Saxon  is 
now  included.  No  disrespect  whatever  is  here 
intended  either  to  the  Komance  languages  or  to 
the  people  who  speak  them.  The  differences 
referred  to  are  explicable  by  historical  facts. 
Under  ancient  Kome,  in  all  its  history,  people 
were  ground  down.  In  its  earlier  history  mil 
itary  duty  and  conquest,  slaughter,  and  blood 
were  the  great  objects  in  the  life  of  the  people 
and  rulers.  In  the  later  stages  these  objects 
were  still  most  followed  and  admired,  but  added 
to  these  was  the  rule  of  the  Ca3sars,  which  let 
loose  all  the  floodgates  of  evil,  in  despotism, 
vice,  effeminate  luxury,  lying,  and  deceit.  The 
language,  like  the  people,  became  fearfully  de 
based  ;  men  cowered,  and  in  using  language 
they  had  to  inflate,  conceal,  and  deceive.  Later 
on,  in  Italy,  France,  and  Spain,  there  was,  to 
say  the  least,  much  more  in  the  government, 
rulers,  and  social  customs  to  keep  up  these 
habits  than  to  dissipate  them.  In  the  case  of 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     49 

the  Northmen,  they  were  always  free.  They 
were,  indeed,  free-booters  and  savages,  but 
they  became  Christianized,  civilized,  and  sof 
tened  with  remarkable  rapidity.  Note  how 
the  Icelanders,  at  first  a  most  bloodthirsty 
people,  have  become  one  of  the  most  gentle 
and  hospitable  races  in  the  world.  The  scenes 
witnessed  in  Paris  between  1789  and  1793,  and 
in  1871,  could  never  have  occurred  in  Sweden, 
Denmark,  or  Norway.  But  why  ?  Because 
those  nations  never  had  their  bodies,  minds, 
and  language  crushed  for  long  ages,  as  have 
the  people  of  the  Latin  races. 

Of  France  in  the  eighteenth  century  a  great 
writer  said :  "  If  ever  there  existed  a  state  of 
society  likely  by  its  crying  and  accumulated 
evils  to  madden  men  to  desperation,  France 
was  in  that  state.  The  people,  despised  and 
enslaved,  were  sunk  in  abject  poverty,  and  were 
crushed  by  laws  of  stringent  cruelty,  enforced 
with  merciless  barbarism."  The  recoil  and 
revolt  were  proportionate  to  the  long  crushing 
and  degradation.  Taine  says  that,  at  the  time 
of  the  Revolution,  out  of  twenty-six  million 
Frenchmen,  only  one  million  could  read,  and 
in  political  matters  only  five  hundred  or  six 
hundred  were  competent.  What  the  aristo 
crats  thought  of  the  common  people  is  illus- 


50     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

trated  by  the  assertion  quoted  by  De  Tocque- 
ville  in  his  Ancien  Regime,  that  Madame  du 
Chatelet  had  no  objection  to  undress  before 
her  servants,  as  she  was  not  convinced  that 
valets  were  men.  The  insolence  of  language  of 
the  one  class,  and  the  cringing  humility  of 
that  of  the  other,  can  therefore  easily  be  im 
agined.  The  effect  of  suddenly  loosing  the 
shackles  of  this  nation  of  mental  slaves,  arid 
assuring  them  that  they  were  able  to  rule 
themselves  without  aid,  and  that  their  great 
duty  was  to  crush  their  oppressors  and  render 
it  impossible  for  them  ever  again  to  rule,  was 
like  putting  human  minds  into  human  tigers 
and  letting  them  loose  to  glut  their  appetites 
for  blood  and  revenge. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  is  to  our  tongues,  what 
father,  mother,  sister,  brother  are  to  our 
hearts.  Words  from  other  languages  have 
been  admitted  into  our  household,  but  they 
do  not  live  under  the  same  roof-tree.  Many 
of  them  are  of  thin  and  cold-blooded  relation 
ship  only.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that,  father, 
mother,  sister,  brother,  are  all  Anglo-Saxon ; 
father-in-law,  mother-in-law,  sister-in-law,  uncle 
and  aunt,  are  either  half  or  wholly  of  Romance 
origin.  The  best  general  account  of  the  differ 
ence  between  other  languages  and  Anglo- 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     51 

Saxon  is,  that  the  latter  is  the  mother  tongue. 
And  this  is  one  of  the  strongest  claims  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  to  be  the  universal  language 
of  the  future.  The  Latin,  under  Rome,  was 
Patrius  Sermo,  the  father's  speech. 

The  steamship  and  the  locomotive,  by  the 
promotion  of  commercial  intercourse,  are  two 
of  the  strongest  possible  auxiliaries  to  assimi 
lation  of  languages.  They  are  democratic, 
too,  in  the  sense  that  they  tend  to  spread,  not 
the  language  of  the  learned,  but  of  trade  and 
of  the  common  people.  Barbarism  and  isola 
tion  vastly  increase,  while  civilization  and 
intercourse  reduce  the  number  of  languages. 
Professor  Sayce  says :  "  Destroy  literature  and 
facility  of  inter-communication,  and  the  lan 
guage  of  England  and  America  would  soon  be 
as  different  as  those  of  France  and  Italy." 
Language,  especially  of  heathen  nations,  must 
be  elevated  before  the  world  can  be  morally 
elevated  and  purified.  Missionary  labors  have 
shown  that  the  heathen  nations  cannot  be 
converted  until  their  language  has  undergone 
moral  re-creation.  Where  there  are  no  words 
expressive  of  purity,  morality,  truth,  honesty, 
candor,  and  good  faith  —  where,  in  fact,  spir 
ituality  is  wanting  in  a  language, —  how  can 
the  people  who  speak  it  be  elevated  to  Chris- 


52     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

tianity  or  be  converted  to  its  pure  and  high 
tenets?  Here,  perhaps,  is  best  seen  the  truth 
of  the  assertion,  heretofore  made  in  these 
pages,  that  the  language  is  the  people. 

The  Greek  authors,  especially  Aristophanes, 
did  much  to  lower  the  moral  and  spiritual 
dignity  of  many  words.  Words  used  as 
trumpets  by  .ZEschylus  were  used  as  baubles 
by  Aristophanes.  The  latter's  filthy  defini 
tion  of  freedom,  is  perhaps  the  strongest  case 
in  point.  How  could  language  fail  to  be 
debased  and  to  suffer,  when  the  great  men 
of  Athens  considered  that  the  objects  of  life 
were  dominion  and  lust;  that  love,  self- 
sacrifice,  and  devotion  were  fictions,  and  that 
oaths  were  only  good  for  deception.  The 
Sophists,  Dr.  Draper  says,  urged  the  cultiva 
tion  of  rhetoric,  that  noble  art  by  which  the 
wrong  may  be  made  to  appear  right  and  the 
worse  the  better  cause ;  by  which  he  who  has 
committed  a  crime  may  so  mystify  society  as 
to  delude  it  into  the  belief  that  he  is  worthy 
of  praise.  This  is  the  very  depth  of  phil 
ological,  and,  therefore,  of  moral,  degradation. 
"  Base  is  the  slave  that  pays,"  said  Falstaff. 
This  is  a  code  of  morals  to  which  every 
Jeremy  Diddler  would  give  a  cheerful  assent, 
and  not  suppose,  either,  that  in  thus  reversing 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     53 

the  laws  of  honesty,  he  would  also  be  assault 
ing  language.  If  this  rule  were  adopted,  the 
word  honesty,  in  its  usual  sense,  would  be  in 
danger  of  erasure.  In  numerous  islands  of  the 
South  Pacific  that  word  has  never  been  called 
into  existence ;  honesty,  with  virtue,  truth,  grati 
tude,  love,  and  many  like  words,  being  utterly 
unknown.  Not  to  have  knowledge  of  these 
virtues,  and  therefore  not  to  have  any  word 
expressive  of  them,  is  not  nearly  so  bad  as 
first  to  have  them  and  then,  through  moral 
declension,  to  lose  them.  Murder  was  thus 
almost  erased  as  a  crime,  when  assassination 
by  poisoning  was  in  Italy  described  as  only 
"  assisting  "  the  death  of  a  victim ;  and  in 
France  administering  a  fatal  powder,  to  expe 
dite  the  death  of  one  from  whom  a  fortune  was 
expected,  was  jocularly  called  "  giving  a  pow 
der  of  succession."  In  the  fall  in  the  meaning 
of  the  word  indolence  a  lie  was  inserted.  It 
declined  into  the  meaning  of  not  to  grieve  or 
have  pain.  But  the  lie  has  been  ejected,  and 
the  word  has  gone  back  to  its  true  meaning  of 
laziness,  a  habit  inevitably  productive  of  pain 
and  sorrow,  instead  of  true  ease  and  enjoy 
ment.  Trench  says :  "  Far  more  and  mightier 
in  every  way  is  a  language  than  any  one  of  the 
works  which  may  have  been  composed  in  it." 


54     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

This  is  true  of  all  but  the  very  greatest 
works;  but  the  assertion  is  not  true  of  the  Bible 
or  of  Shakespeare,  at  least.  In  these  two 
works  spiritual  and  mental  temples  were 
erected  from  the  stones  of  language  whose 
summits  reach  unto  heaven;  and  yet  their 
height  is  not  so  wonderful  as  their  wisdom, 
simplicity,  strength,  grace,  harmony,  an<I 
beauty.  It  is,  indeed,  hardly  possible  to 
conceive  of  any  author  erecting  mental  struc 
tures  more  lofty  and  sublime  than  those  found 
in  these  two  books,  although  every  word  in 
the  vocabulary  was  used  in  the  effort.  Was 
Italian  greater  than  the  use  Dante  made  of 
it?  Can  language,  while  yet  in  words  simply 
—  that  is,  detached, —  ever  be  so  great  as 
when  used  in  combination  by  inspired  proph 
ets,  apostles,  sages,  and  poets  ?  It  was  created 
for  the  latter;  and  in  the  two  books  named 
we  have  in  the  one  case  men  inspired  of  God 
spiritually,  and  in  the  other  mentally,  cre 
ating  works  the  wisdom,  beauty,  and  full 
meaning  of  which  no  man  has  ever  yet  been 
able  even  to  pretend  to  fathom. 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  no  language 
is  more  moral  and  truthful,  in  the  sense  of 
earnestness  and  directness  of  meaning,  than 
the  English.  It  will  talk  earnestly,  plainly, 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     55 

and  truthfully;  it  is  a  philological  hitter, 
straight  out  from  the  shoulder.  Much  greater 
modesty  is  displayed  in  English,  too,  than  in 
languages  of  Latin  origin  or  in  Latin  itself. 
Those  who  have  read  Tacitus  in  Latin  and  in 
English,  or  the  memoirs  of  St.  Simon  in 
French  and  English,  will  understand  this. 
No  modesty  or  concealment  is  thought  neces 
sary  in  the  majority  of  Continental  languages 
of  Latin  origin.  The  support  which  English 
has  received  from  the  Bible  in  these  directions 
has  never  been,  as  far  as  I  know,  sufficiently 
understood  or  acknowledged.  St.  Paul  and 
St.  John  are  known  to  the  world  at  large  only 
as  apostles  of  Christ.  Few  know  that,  in 
addition,  they  were  unsurpassed  masters  of 
language.  Never  was  greater  brevity,  strength, 
power,  persuasion,  and  spiritual  and  moral 
beauty  evolved  from  words  than  these  men 
exhibited  in  their  use.  No  great  sculptor, 
painter,  or  poet  ever  attained  his  nearest 
approach  to  perfection  but  by  the  yielding 
of  his  higher  powers  and  genius  to  the  most 
intense  earnestness  and  love  of  his  subject; 
and  he  who  wishes  to  see  a  writer's  soul 
thrown  into  his  words  must  consult  the  two 
inspired  writers  named.  Words  in  the  hands 
of  such  authors  —  in  the  hands  of  all  really 


56     THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE. 

great  authors  —  become  irradiated  with  divine 
life,  strength,  light,  and  beauty;  whereas, 
when  used  for  deception  or  in  any  way  to 
excuse  moral  turpitude,  these  elements  must 
go  out  of  them.  Their  pillars,  deflected  from 
the  plumb  line,  begin  to  totter  and  to  fall.  A 
coniferous  tree  and  a  lighthouse  have  both  to 
withstand  strong  assaults  —  the  one  from 
wind,  and  the  other  from  waves.  Their 
strength  and  ability  to  overcome  these  as 
saults  lie  in  having  their  center  of  gravity 
near  their  base.  The  center  of  gravity  of 
words  —  their  strength,  likewise, —  is  in  their 
roots,  their  foundations. 

In  conclusion,  it  is  necessary  to  remind  all 
readers  that  the  language  they  use  is  not  their 
own,  but  belongs  to  the  race.  Untold  labor 
was  spent  on  the  best  languages  —  untold  sacri 
fice  of  blood,  suffering,  and  study,  in  elevating 
and  preserving  them  in  their  present  stage  of 
liberty  and  purity.  Language,  then,  is  a  sa 
cred  heritage,  to  be  used  with  respect,  and 
with  constant  aim  after  truth  and  simplicity, 
which  always  mean  power.  A  solemn  duty 
rests  upon  all  to  contribute  toward  the  eleva 
tion  of  language  by  the  use  of  what  is  best 
and  highest  in  words;  words  that  shall  not 
debase,  but  elevate  and  refine.  The  author 


THE  ALPHABET  AND  LANGUAGE.     57 

does  not  absolutely  assert  that  great  authors 
cannot  be  rightly  appreciated  by  those  who 
have  not  studied  philology;  but  he  does  say 
that,  after  such  study,  they  will  be  much 
better  understood,  and  afford  much  greater 
mental  pleasure. 


Immortality  of  the  Big  Trees 


IMMORTALITY  OF  THE  BIG  TREES. 

THE  gigantic  height  and  girth  of  the 
Conifers  of  California  and  Oregon  have 
elicited  universal  wonder  and  admiration. 
The  botanist  who  first  discovered  and  de 
scribed  them,  and  who  in  his  lonely  wander 
ings  suffered  untold  hardships  in  the  search 
(David  Douglass),  said  that  he  could  not  con 
template  the  redwoods  and  the  Douglass  spruce 
without  feelings  of  the  deepest  awe.  So  far 
as  the  writer  knows,  no  reasons  have  ever 
been  given  for  the  great  size  of  these  trees. 
The  ice  of  the  glacial  period,  which  drove 
them  from  their  original  homes  in  the  far 
north,  to  points  much  farther  south  than  where 
they  are  now  found,  planed  and  ground  down 
the  solid  rock  of  their  present  mountain 
homes.  The  resulting  detritus,  still  existing 
there  in  ancient  moraines,  forms  rich  forest 
soil.  The  force,  therefore,  which  exiled  them 
from  their  old  home  at  length  prepared  an 
other.  This  glacial  grinding  and  apparent 
degradation  resulted  in  mountain  architecture 
of  the  most  Cyclopean  and  wonderful  charac 
ter,  as  revealed  in  the  Yosemites  of  California 
and  Norway,  in  which  domed-rock  structure 


62         IMMOETALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

predominates.  Lifeless,  cold,  and  unpitying 
the  glacial  ice-tools  may  have  been ;  but  they 
graved  and  chiseled  in  curves,  making  beauty 
wherever  they  went. 

Although  the  moraine  soil  aids  very  rapid 
growth  in  our  gigantic  conifers,  they  attain  to 
massive  proportions  and  their  greatest  age 
without  it.  One  of  the  very  largest  sequoias 
of  the  Sierra  Nevada  was  found  on  a  dry  hill 
side  by  Mr.  John  Muir,  the  well-known  Cali 
fornia  botanist  and  geologist.  This  tree  had 
a  diameter  of  thirty-five  feet  eight  inches,  ex 
clusive  of  the  bark.  Mr.  Muir  estimated  its 
age,  by  counting  the  annual  rings,  to  be  over 
four  thousand  years.  It  had  evidently  grown 
very  slowly,  because  its  food  was  not  the 
mountain  meal  of  a  moraine,  but  hard  fare 
obtainable  from  rock;  its  chief  sustenance, 
indeed,  was  derived  from  the  air:  yet  very 
large  growth  and  comparative  immortality 
were  exhibited  by  that  tree.  What,  then,  were 
the  other  elements  to  which  it  was  indebted 
for  its  massive  size  and  great  age?  The  answer 
is,  a  constant  and  full  supply  of  never-frozen 
water  at  the  roots,  a  still  greater  daily  supply 
of  warm,  unclouded  sunshine.  This  continu 
ous,  rich,  life-giving  sunshine  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  features  of  the  Pacific  coast 


IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES.         63 

climate,  but  especially  of  the  Sierra  Nevada. 

Whether  the  oldest  sequoias  be  fifteen  hun 
dred  or  four  thousand  years  old  is  not  the 
vital  point.  That  point  rests  on  the  fact  that 
not  a  single  one  of  these  big  trees  has  yet 
been  found  showing  any  evidence  of  the  fee 
bleness  of  old  age  or  of  natural  decay  —  not 
one !  Fires  deface  and  consume  them ;  storms, 
when  the  trees  are  in  exposed  situations,  may 
prostrate,  and  lightning  (a  frequent  agent  in 
their  destruction)  may  blast  and  destroy,  or 
set  fire  to  them ;  but  natural  decay  and  death 
have  not  yet  marked  or  defiled  them.  The 
continuity  of  unclouded  light  undoubtedly 
has  very  much  to  do  with  this.  On  page  42 
of  "  Bog  ens  Indveindring"  the  assertion  is 
made,  that  the  trees  requiring  most  light  are 
content  with  the  poorest  soils,  and  vice  versa. 
The  almost  miraculous  rapidity  with  which 
crops  mature  in  the  brief  summers  close  to  or 
within  the  Arctic  Circle  is  undoubtedly  due, 
more  than  is  generally  imagined,  quite  as 
much  to  the  continuity  of  sunlight  as  to  an 
extra  supply  of  sun-heat. 

Without  sunlight,  chlorophyl  cannot  be 
formed,  and  without  the  latter  agent  carbonic 
acid  and  water  cannot  be  decomposed  and  as 
similated  in  plants.  How  much  heat  is  pro- 


64         IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

duced  by  the  absorption  of  light  by  the  leaves 
of  the  big  Coniferas,  or  by  deciduous  trees,  can 
not  yet  be  told;  but,  no  doubt,  the  amount 
has  a  very  sensible  effect  in  stimulating  the 
growth  and  sustenance  of  the  trees.  Clear 
sunshine  is  continuous  in  the  Sierra  Nevada 
of  California  from  about  June  to  November; 
and  even  in  the  so-called  winter  months  there 
are,  on  the  average,  five  days  of  clear  weather 
overhead  to  two  of  clouds  and  rain  or  falling 
snow,  even  when  the  snow  is  on  the  ground 
to  a  depth  of  from  five  to  forty  feet.  I  have 
repeatedly  been  in  the  upper  Sierra  Nevada 
on  snowshoes,  in  winter,  when  the  weather 
overhead  was  as  clear  as  in  June,  and  when 
the  thermometer  one  hundred  feet  above  the 
snow  covering  must  have  registered  from  sev 
enty  to  eighty  degrees  in  the  sun.  February 
in  the  valleys  of  California  answers  to  the  June 
of  the  Atlantic  States  as  a  growing  month. 
All  of  the  great  Coniferse,  but  especially  the 
big  sequoias,  have  a  heavy  and  widespreading 
mass  of  sponge-like  roots,  which  arrest  and 
hold  sufficient  moisture  for  constant  irriga 
tion.  There  is,  indeed,  such  a  superabun 
dance  of  water,  that  springs  are  constantly 
found  issuing  from  the  base  of  these  trees. 
Now,  the  growth  of  trees  is  as  much  stimulated 


IMMORTALITY    OF    THE     BIG    TREES.          65 

by  irrigation  as  that  of  food  plants.  By  con 
structing  lateral  irrigating  ditches  on  hillsides 
in  Europe,  firs  grew  to  twice  the  size  of  those 
found  in  dry  soil  adjoining.  In  other  experi 
ments,  irrigated  trees  grew  seven  times  as  fast 
as  those  not  having  the  advantage  of  artificial 
watering.  The  sequoias,  therefore,  are  under 
the  most  constant  stimulus  of  elements  most 
vital  at  once  to  their  health  and  growth.  The 
water  around  their  roots,  too,  is  never  frozen. 
When  occasional  severe  frosts  prevail,  and  the 
thermometer,  under  their  stress,  descends  to 
its  greatest  depth  (about  five  degrees  below 
zero),  the  ground  is  covered  by  snow,  which 
maintains  the  warmth  of  both  roots  and  soil. 
This  is  not  the  least  of  the  causes  tending  to 
the  continuous  growth,  massive  size,  health, 
and  therefore  great  age,  of  the  big  trees  of 
California.  The  Coniferse  of  New  England 
cease  growing  in  the  late  summer  and  fall; 
they  then  begin  to  store  up  vitality  to  with 
stand  the  cold  of  winter,  as  hibernating  ani 
mals  do. 

Although  the  growth  of  the  great  Coniferse 
of  California  is  continuous,  there  is  no  over- 
stimulation  in  it.  The  growth  is  so  perfectly 
natural,  and  so  eminently  healthy  and  strong, 
that  it  comes  nearer  resulting  in  immortal  life 


66         IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

in  these  trees  than  the  age  exhibited  by  any  other 
trees  or  any  other  living  thing  in  the  world. 
Some  other  trees  enumerated  by  the  late  Dr. 
Asa  Gray  have  also  records  of  very  great  age. 

"  Trees  [he  says]  far  outlast  all  other  living  things,  and 
form  familiar  and  appropriate  symbols  of  long  protracted 
existence.  .  .  .  We  are  therefore  naturally  led  to  in 
quire,  whether  there  is  any  absolute  limit  to  their  exist 
ence.  If  not  destroyed  by  accident— that  is,  by  extrinsic 
cause  of  whatever  sort,— do  trees,  like  ourselves,  even 
tually  perish  from  old  age?  The  unavoidable  indura 
tion  and  incrustation  of  its  cells  and  vessels,  apart  from 
other  causes,  would  put  an  early  and  sure  limit  to  the  life 
of  the  tree,  just  as  it  does,  in  fact,  terminate  the  existence 
of  the  leaf,  the  proper  emblem  of  mortality,  which,  al 
though  it  generally  only  lives  a  single  season,  may  be 
said  to  truly  die  of  old  age.  .  .  .  The  old  and  central 
part  of  the  trunk  may,  indeed,  decay ;  but  this  is  of  little 
moment,  so  long  as  new  layers  are  regularly  formed  at 
the  circumference.  The  tree  survives,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  show  that  it  is  liable  to  death  from  old  age,  in  any 
proper  sense  of  the  term.  .  .  .  Though  the  wood  in  the 
center  of  the  trunks  and  larger  branches,  the  product  of 
leaves  and  buds  that  have  long  ago  disappeared,  may  die 
and  decay,  yet,  while  new  individuals  are  formed  on  the 
surface  with  each  successive  crop  of  fresh  buds,  and 
placed  in  as  favorable  communication  with  the  soil  and 
air  as  their  predecessors,  the  aggregate  tree  would  appear 
to  have  no  necessary,  no  inherent  limit  to  its  existence. 
.  .  .  This  doctrine  of  the  indefinite  longevity  of  trees 
— that  they  die  from  injury  or  disease,  or,  in  one  word, 
from  accidents,  but  never  from  old  age,— was  first  pro 
pounded  by  the  distinguished  De  Candolle,  near  the 
commencement  of  the  present  century." 

All  of  the  remarkably  aged  specimens  of 
various  species  in  all  portions  of  the  world 


IMMORTALITY     OF    THE    BIG    TREES.         67 

enumerated  by  Dr.  Gray  show  some  signs  of 
decrepitude  or  decay.  Death  was  at  work 
somewhere  in  their  center  or  circumference. 
I  am  not  able  to  assert  that  the  sequoias  are 
the  only  exception,  but  they  certainly  are  an 
exception,  to  this  rule.  If  they  have  any  com 
panions  in  other  trees,  they  are  very  few.  The 
sequoia  heartwood,  the  duramen,  the  oldest 
wood  in  the  tree,  although  in  one  sense  dead, 
is  always  the  hardest  and  soundest  wood  in 
the  whole  structure.  This  is  a  wonderful  fact. 
These  sequoias  are  sustained  by  a  combination 
of  the  elements  of  soil,  water,  sunlight,  and 
sun-heat,  not  to  speak  at  all  of  the  sustenance 
they,  in  common  with  all  trees,  derive  from 
the  nourishing  air.  The  quality  and  conti 
nuity  of  this  nourishment  result  in  a  height 
and  girth  that  are  astonishing.  But  in  this 
respect  the  sequoias  are  not  alone ;  the  sugar- 
pine  almost  rivals  them  in  stature,  but  falls 
far  below  them  in  bulk  and  age.  The  sugar- 
pines,  too,  are  subject  to  many  diseases;  they 
therefore  decay  and  die,  while  the  most  dis 
tinguishing  and  remarkable  feature  of  the 
sequoias  is,  that  not  one  of  them,  as  far  as  ob 
served,  is  subject  to  any  disease.  It  is  possible 
that  this  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  greater  sap-distributing  (that  is,  life- 


68         IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

giving)  power  than  any  other  tree  whatever. 
On  this  subject,  Marsh  says: 

"  In  trees  affected  by  no  discoverable  cause  of  death, 
decay  begins  at  the  topmost  branches,  which  seem  to 
wither  and  die  for  want  of  nutriment.  The  mysterious 
force  by  which  the  sap  is  carried  to  the  roots, -to  the 
utmost  twigs,  cannot  be  conceived  to  be  unlimited  in 
power,  and  it  is  probable  that  it  differs  in  different 
species ;  so  that,  while  it  may  suffice  to  raise- the  fluid  to 
the  height  of  five  hundred  feet  in  the  sequoia,  it  may  not 
be  able  to  carry  it  beyond  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in 
the  oak.  .  .  .  Whenever  a  tree  attains  to  the  limit 
beyond  which  its  circulating  fluids  cannot  rise,  we  may 
suppose  that  death  begins." 

That  limit  has  never  been  reached  by  the 
most  gigantic  sequoias  now  growing,  and  it  is 
quite  probable  that,  because  of  the  perfection 
of  their  nourishment,  they  have  equal  perfec 
tion  in  the  distribution  of  their  sap.  For  what 
we  know  of  the  living  sequoia  we  are  almost 
wholly  indebted  to  Mr.  John  Muir,  the  only 
man  in  the  world  who  has  made  a  prolonged 
botanical,  personal  study  of  them  in  their 
mountain  homes. 

Professor  Asa  Gray  prophesied  that  the  fos 
sil  remains  of  these  trees  would  be  found  in 
the  Arctic  Circle.  Nordenskjold  and  others 
subsequently  found  these  remains  in  great 
abundance  there.  Professor  Gray  says : 

"  The  difference  between  the  two  big  trees  of  California 
is  as  noticeable  as  their  resemblance  and  their  isolation. 
They  are  the  survivors  of  a  numerous  family  of  wide  dis- 


IMMORTALITY     OF     THE    BIG    TREES.          69 

tribution,  which  is  first  recognized  in  the  cretaceous  for 
mation  in  several  species,  and  which  reached  its  maxi 
mum  in  middle  tertiary  in  fourteen  recognizable  species 
or  forms.  Almost  from  the  first,  these  separated  into  two 
groups,  one  foreshadowing  the  coast,  the  other  the  Sierra, 
redwood.  The  intermediate  species  are  extinct,  the  two 
extreme  forms  have  survived.  ...  So  the  sequoias 
are  of  ancient  stock  ;  their  ancestors  and  kindreds  formed 
a  large  part  of  the  forest  which  flourished  about  the  polar 
regions,  and  which  extended  into  the  low  latitudes  of 
Europe.  .  .  .  Libocedrus  (the  Incense  Cedar),  ap 
pears  to  have  passed  its  lot  with  the  sequoias.  Two 
species,  according  to  Heer,  were  with  them  in  Spits 
bergen.  Libocedrus  decurrens  is  one  of  the  noblest  asso 
ciates  of  the  present  redwoods.  But  all  the  rest  are  in 
the  southern  hemisphere— two  in  the  southern  extremi 
ties  of  the  Andes,  two  in  the  South  Sea  Islands.  Pines  of 
the  same  species,  now  found  associated  with  the  big  trees, 
were  then  their  associates  in  Greenland." 

How  much  is  yet  to  be  learned  about  these 
trees  may  be  understood  from  the  little  we  can 
say  definitely  about  them  in  points  herein 
mentioned.  Could  the  sequoias  be  protected 
from  fire,  lightning,  and  storms,  we  would 
probably  find  trees,  not  one  to  four  thousand 
years  old,  but  of  an  age  only  to  be  reckoned 
from  the  far  distant  past,  when  they  were  first 
naturally  sown  in  their  last,  present,  and  very 
limited  habitat. 

In  reference  to  the  age  of  these  trees,  Pro 
fessor  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  lately  wrote: 

"Very  absurd  statements  are  made  to  visitors  as  to  the 
antiquity  of  these  trees,  three  or  four  thousand  years 


70         IMMORTALITY    OP    THE    BIG    TREES. 

being  usually  given  as  their  age.  This  is  founded  on  the 
fact  that,  while  many  of  the  large  sequoias  are  greatly 
damaged  by  fire,  the  large  pines  and  firs  around  them  are 
quite  uninjured.  As  many  of  these  pines  are  assumed  to 
be  near  a  thousand  years  old,  the  epoch  of  the  '  great 
fire '  is  supposed  to  be  earlier  still,  and  as  the  sequoias 
have  not  outgrown  the  fire-scars  in  all  that  time,  they  are 
supposed  to  have  then  arrived  at  their  full  growth.  But 
the  simple  explanation  of  these  trees  alone  having  suf 
fered  so  much  from  fire,  is  that  their  bark  is  unusually 
thick,  dry,  soft,  and  fibrous,  and  it  thus  catches  fire  more 
easily  and  burns  more  readily  and  for  a  longer  time  thati 
that  of  the  other  Coniferce.  Forest  fires  occur  continu 
ally,  and  the  visible  damage  done  to  these  trees  has  prob 
ably  all  occurred  in  the  present  century.  Professor  G.  B. 
Bradley,  of  the  University  of  California,  has  carefully 
counted  the  rings  of  annual  growth  on  the  stump  of  the 
4  Pavilion  Tree,'  and  found  them  to  be  one  thousand  two 
hundred  and  forty;  and,  after  considering  all  that  has 
been  alleged  as  to  the  uncertainty  of  this  mode  of  esti 
mating  the  age  of  a  tree,  he  believes  that,  in  the  climate 
of  California,  in  the  zone  of  altitude  where  these  trees 
grow,  the  seasons  of  growth  and  repose  are  so  strongly 
marked  that  the  number  of  annual  rin&s  gives  an  ac 
curate  result.  Other  points  that  have  been  studied  by 
Professor  Bradley  are,  the  reasons  why  there  are  so  few 
young  trees  in  the  groves,  and  what  is  the  cause  of  de 
struction  of  the  old  trees.  To  take  the  last  point  first, 
these  noble  trees  seem  to  be  singularly  free  from  disease 
or  from  decay  due  to  old  age.  All  the  trees  that  have 
been  cut  down  are  solid  to  the  heart,  and  none  of  the 
standing  trees  show  any  indications  of  natural  decay. 
The  only  apparent  cause  of  their  overthrow  is  the  wind; 
and  by  noting  the  direction  of  a  large  number  of  fallen 
trees  it  is  found  that  the  great  majority  of  them  lie  more 
or  less  toward  the  south.  This  is  not  the  direction  of  the 
prevalent  winds,  but  many  of  the  tallest  trees  lean  toward 
the  south,  owing  to  the  increased  growth  of  the  topmost 


IMMORTALITY    OP     THE    BIG    TREES.          71 

branches  toward  the  sun ;  they  are  then  acted  upon  by 
violent  gales,  which  loosen  their  roots,  and  whatever  the 
direction  of  the  wind  that  finally  overthrows  them,  they 
fall  in  the  direction  of  the  over-balancing  top  weight. 

"The  young  trees  grow  spiry  and  perfectly  upright, 
but  as  soon  as  they  overtop  the  surrounding  trees  and 
get  the  full  influence  of  the  sun  and  wind,  the  highest 
branches  grow  out  laterally,  killing  those  beneath  their 
shade,  and  thus  a  dome-shaped  top  is  produced.  Taking 
into  consideration  the  health  and  vigor  of  the  largest 
trees,  it  seems  probable  that,  under  favorable  conditions 
of  shelter  from  violent  winds  and  from  a  number  of  trees 
around  them  of  nearly  equal  height,  big  trees  might  be 
produced  far  surpassing  in  height  and  bulk  any  that  have 
yet  been  discovered." 

If  Professor  Wallace,  by  personal  examina 
tion  and  study,  had  arrived  at  the  above  con 
clusions,  his  knowledge  and  reputation  would 
be  the  strongest  possible  guarantee  of  their  cor 
rectness;  but  all  he  says  was  gathered  from 
Professor  Bradley,  an  associate  professor  of 
English  in  the  University  of  California.  Pro 
fessor  Bradley  is  not  a  botanist,  and  is  neither 
here  nor  elsewhere  recognized  as  an  authority 
on  the  subject  of  the  sequoias.  How,  indeed, 
could  he  be,  since  he  never  made  any  pretense 
of  long  personal  study  of  either  their  age, 
growth,  homes,  or  surroundings.  He  counted 
the  rings  of  but  one  tree. 

The  sequoias  are  the  coniferous  tree  kings  of 
the  earth.  They  possess,  too,  a  striking  in 
dividuality  and  nobility,  more  remarkable  in 


72         IMMORTALITY    OP    THE    BIG    TREES. 

some  respects  than  any  of  their  other  features. 
They  are  surpassed  in  size  only  by  two  varie 
ties  of  the  broad-leafed!  eucalyptus  species  of 
Australia.  The  Eucalyptus  amygdalina  has 
been  seen  four  hundred  and  eighty  feet  in 
height,  and  with  a  circumference  of  over  one 
hundred  feet  three  feet  from  the  ground,  and 
of  eighty  feet  fifty-six  feet  from  the  surface. 

Since  California  was  settled  our  sequoias 
have  been  subject  to  constant  destruction  and 
vandalism  by  fire  and  the  axe.  Even  their  in 
fantile  children  were  destroyed.  If  fire  spared 
them  —  which  it  never  does  —  sheep,  more 
injurious  to  young  trees  than  all  other  agents 
of  destruction  combined,  have  for  thirty  years 
been  let  loose  in  these  magnificent  and  im 
mortal  groves,  and  each  of  them,  whether  the 
young  of  one  year  or  the  king  of  four  thousand 
years,  were  alike  doomed  to  destruction  from 
the  various  causes  enumerated. 

The  war  with  these  trees  and  their  pine, 
cedar,  and  fir  companions  is  a  war  against 
unsurpassed  size,  grace,  strength,  beauty,  maj 
esty,  and  comparatively  everlasting  age.  The 
United  States  Government,  until  lately,  was 
utterly  unworthy  of  the  heritage  of  them. 
That  ruin  and  desolation  would  follow  their 
loss  was  never  denied ;  and  yet  all  that  was 


IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES.         73 

said  and  written  on  this  subject,  and  all  the 
analogies  cited  from  the  experience  of  numer 
ous  countries  where  forest  denudation  has  pro 
duced  the  most  widespread  soil  and  climatic 
desolation  and  disaster,  fell  until  lately  upon 
unhearing  official  ears.  But  Mr.  Noble,  Secre 
tary  of  the  Interior  under  President  Harrison's 
administration,  determined  thoroughly  to  in 
vestigate  this  forest  question,  in  which  he  was 
ably  aided  by  the  Sierra  Club  (of  which  Mr. 
John  Muir  was  President),  and  by  all  parties 
interested  in  irrigation,  which  depends  wholly 
in  this  State  on  the  rivers  of  the  Sierra  Nevada, 
and  they,  in  their  turn,  are  nearly  wholly  de 
pendent  on  forest  preservation.  Mr.  Noble  sent 
two  commissioners  to  the  Sierra  Nevada,  whose 
reports  revealed  almost  innumerable  cases  of 
bold-faced  forest  robbery  under  the  dummy 
system  of  perjury  and  land-grabbing.  Their 
report  also  showed  the  vital  need  of  the  im 
mediate  ejection  of  sheep  and  cattle  from  the 
mountains  in  summer.  Their  owners  for 
thirty  years  have  enjoyed  free  pasture  there. 
Here,  as  in  Europe,  it  has  been  abundantly 
shown  that  pasturage,  especially  of  sheep,  even 
where  it  did  not  cause  herders'  fires,  was  ut 
terly  destructive  to  the  natural  condition  of  the 
always  friable  soil  and  to  all  shrubbery  and 


74         IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

young  trees.  The  shrubbery  as  much  as  the 
large  trees  serves  as  a  shade  and  protection  for 
snow.  It  is  an  efficient  sunshade,  detaining 
the  snow  in  its  summer  tendency  of  hasty  re 
turn  to  the  freedom  of  water. 

The  commissioners  referred  to,  recommend 
ed  that  the  size  of  the  Yosemite  reservation, 
containing  nearly  one  million  acres,  be  not 
reduced.  A  California  Congressman  (Mr. 
Caminetti)  has  been  laboring  assiduously  for 
its  reduction,  on  the  ground  that  a  number  of 
miners  and  settlers  will  be  treated  unjustly  if 
the  reservation  is  preserved  intact.  Acting  upon 
thorough  information  thus  personally  obtained 
by  Mr.  Noble's  commissioners,  and  upon  the 
latter's  strong  recommendation,  President  Har 
rison,  by  virtue  of  power  conferred  on  him  by 
an  act  of  Congress  of  1893,  reserved  all  of  the 
western  slope  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  range  from 
private  entry,  from  the  Yosemite  National  Park 
on  the  north  to  the  southern  extremity  of  the 
range,  thus  protecting  the  head-waters  of  all 
the  streams  tributary  to  the  great  San  Joaquin 
Valley.  This  measure  was  by  far  the  great 
est  boon  conferred  on  California  by  President 
Harrison's  administration.  But  the  work  is 
not  complete.  President  Cleveland  should 
finish  it  by  reserving  the  other  half  of  the 


IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES.         75 

Sierra  Nevada,  from  the  Yosemite  Park  to  the 
Oregon  line.  Mr.  Muir  thinks  that  all  the 
great  forest  belts  of  this  coast  should  be  under 
the  control  of  the  General  Government  forever. 
But  neither  Oregon  nor  Washington  need  irri 
gation. 

That  portion  of  the  forests  of  the  Sierra  still 
left  in  Government  ownership  is  so  only  be 
cause  of  its  inaccessibility.  All  timber  lands 
worth  two  dollars  and  a  half  an  acre  have  been 
appropriated,  to  an  elevation  of  about  six 
thousand  feet.  Those  higher  up,  and  subject 
still  to  reservation,  will  in  many  cases  not  re 
main  long  so.  Wagon-roads  or  railroads,  by 
making  them  accessible,  will  make  them  worth 
stealing ;  that  being  the  word  expressive  of  the 
nearly  universal  means  by  which  "  Uncle  Sam  " 
has  been  despoiled  of  the  most  magnificent 
coniferous  woods  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  Too 
soon  —  all  too  soon  —  they  are  destroyed  or 
stolen ;  but  they  will  never,  alas,  never  return ! 
Long-drawn  centuries  were  required  for  their 
growth,  and  as  long-stretching  years  would  be 
needed  for  their  replacement ;  but  the  fact  is, 
that  when  once  cut,  or  otherwise  destroyed, 
they  will  never  be  replaced.  With  their  re 
moval  all  the  requisites  of  soil  protection  and 
moisture  will  be  changed.  The  Sierra,  with 


76         IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES. 

them,  has  the  most  glorious  forests  on  the  face 
of  the  earth ;  without  them,  as  in  all  such  cases 
of  denudation,  blistered,  bare  rocks  and  soils, 
torn  by  short-lived  spring  torrents,  carrying 
sand,  rnud,  rocks,  and  desolation  to  the  valleys 
below,  will  succeed.  The  completion  of  the 
reservation  of  the  wThole  Sierra  Nevada  north 
ward  cannot  be  too  speedily  included  in  Mr. 
Harrison's  reservation  of  the  southern  half. 
This  business  of  reserving  forests  is  a  case  of 
the  most  pressing,  most  vital  necessity,  not  on  be 
half  of  California  alone,  but  of  all  the  other 
arid  States — Nevada,  Utah,  Arizona,  New  Mex 
ico,  Idaho,  and  Colorado.  But  this  last  is  a 
subject  upon  which  I  cannot  here  enter,  al 
though  it  is  a  pressing  and  most  mournful  one. 
California's  case  is  the  most  important,  only 
because  the  trees  to  be  saved  are  far  the  largest 
and  the  finest  of  their  species  in  the  world.  So 
far,  too,  as  Colorado  is  concerned,  there  is  little 
left  for  the  Government  to  save.  Railroad 
builders,  charcoal  burners,  cattlemen,  sheep- 
herders,  and  lumbermen  have  already  swept 
off  nearly  all  of  the  comparatively  small  and 
sparsely  growing  forests  of  that  State. 

Another  persistent  effort  is  just  now  being 
made  to  reduce  the  size  of  the  Yosemite  timber 
reservation  described,  on  the  plea  that  honest 


IMMORTALITY    OF    THE    BIG    TREES.          77 

settlers'  rights  will  suffer ;  that  there  is  irriga 
ble  land  on  some  portions  of  the  tract,  and 
that  there  are  also  mineral  lands  on  it.  Let 
the  settlers,  if  there  are  any  honest  ones  there, 
be  recompensed,  but  under  no  circumstances 
should  the  reserve  be  reduced.  Any  change 
in  it,  no  matter  how  disguised,  means  its  re 
opening  to  timber-grabbers,  and  the  destruc 
tion  of  its  forests. 


Wealth  and  Poverty  of  the 
Chicago  Exposition. 


~*~—;'^V  v'^X. 

ra,    -.XV 

'TJHI7EE  ;iTY)} 
^, 


03T 


' 


WEALTH  AND  POVERTY  OF  THE 
CHICAGO  EXPOSITION. 

THE  World's  Fair  at  Chicago  was  a  greater 
Exposition  than  that  last  held  at  Paris,  as 
the  Paris  Exposition  was  greater  than  the  pre 
ceding  one  at  Philadelphia.  Each  of  these 
Expositions,  indeed,  is  greater  —  necessarily 
greater  —  than  its  predecessor,  simply  because 
each  is  carrying  more  time,  and  with  more  time 
more  advance  in  the  progressive,  as  compared 
with  the  stationary  arts.  Of  the  latter,  I 
especially  mean  those  arts  which  have  mental 
expression  only,  poetry  and  the  drama,  and 
by  the  progressive  arts,  those  which  demand 
both  mental  invention  and  physical  expression 
—  sculpture,  architecture,  painting,  music,  and 
mechanics.  Men's  minds  have  not  ceased  to 
labor  in  the  greatest  of  the  arts  first  named 
-that  is,  in  poetry  and  the  drama, —  and 
work  has  been  performed  in  both  within  the 
last  half  century  which  is  worthy  of  both 
deep  study  and  of  high  praise ;  yet  small 
approach  to  equaling,  much  less  surpassing, 
the  poetry  or  drama  of  past  ages  can  now 
be  registered.  Indeed,  Shakespeare,  Homer, 
^Eschylus,  Euripides,  Sophocles,  Aristophanes, 


82  WEALTH     AND     POVERTY 

Virgil  and  Horace,  Dante  and  Milton,  and 
to  some  minds  Goethe  and  Schiller,  Moliere 
and  Racine  also,  as  poets  and  dramatists, 
tragic  or  comic,  and  as  moralists,  philosophers, 
naturalists,  sages  and  wits,  have  so  exhausted 
human  admiration,  and  so  closely  attained  to 
perfection,  that  there  seems  little  real  foothold 
left  for  their  successors.  However  admirable 
the  latter  may  have  been,  and  however  much 
read  or  praised  their  works  may  be,  it  is 
still  generally  felt,  after  the  expression  of 
all  praise,  that  they  are  hardly  in  the  list 
with  the  "  poets  paramount "  who  so  long  ago 
preceded  them.  As  Hazlitt  has  said:  "The 
niches  are  occupied ;  the  tables  are  full." 

The  world  is  so  thoroughly  explored,  that, 
omitting  science,  probably  nearly  all  of  what, 
in  a  strictly  literary  sense,  is  known  as  learn 
ing  has  been  revealed.  The  shackles  have 
for  ages  been  taken  from  the  human  mind, 
and  legal  obstacles  withdrawn  from  all  human 
effort.  We  therefore  can  hardly  imagine 
another  age  like  the  golden  one  of  Greece, 
or  the  mental  triumphs,  in  a  book  sense,  of 
that  of  Elizabeth.  The  conviction  is  some 
what  similar,  but  not  nearly  so  strong,  in 
regard  to  sculpture,  architecture,  and  painting. 
Few  believe  it  possible  that  a  mind  and  age- 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  83 

encircling  genius  like  Shakespeare  can  again 
appear,  unless  by  some  world-transforming 
scientific  discovery,  or  new  mental  revolution 
far  surpassing  anything  now  likely  to  occur. 
Puck's  promise  of  putting  a  girdle  around  the 
earth  in  forty  minutes  —  then  apparently  as 
light,  airy,  and  fabulous  as  the  play  in  which 
it  occurs  —  has  long  ago  been  more  than 
realized;  and  even  its  comparative  perform 
ance,  as,  a  fact  of  human  transportation,  either 
in  the  air  or  through  the  earth,  would  not  now 
in  some  respects  be  as  wonderful  as  was  the 
defeat  of  the  Persians,  the  birth  of  a  new  sense 
of  Hellenic  nationality,  and  the  opening  up  of 
the  Old  World  to  observation  and  increased 
colonization  by  the  Greeks,  or  the  discoveries 
of  the  treasures  of  the  old  learning,  the  break 
ing  up  of  ecclesiasticism,  the  substitution  of 
the  Copernican  for  the  Ptolemaic  system  of 
astronomy,  and  the  discovery  of  a  new  world, 
were  to  the  Continent  and  England  of  the  time 
of  Elizabeth.  In  sculpture  and  architecture, 
Egypt,  originally,  had  great  influence  upon 
Greece;  and  Italy,  in  learning,  had  a  similar 
influence  upon  England. 

Probably  no  nation  can  experience  more 
than  one  such  climacteric  as  that  which  the 
Greece  of  Pericles,  the  Italy  of  Lorenzo,  and 


84  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

the  England  of  Elizabeth  experienced.  The 
events  which  created  those  periods  were  world- 
transforming  in  their  importance.  They  af 
fected  every  human  interest,  mental  and 
physical.  Beside  these,  the  three  most  mem 
orable  epochs  in  the  world's  history,  the  late 
terrible  struggle  which  resulted  in  the  unifi 
cation  of  Germany,  or  the  War  of  the  Rebel 
lion,  which  first  solidly  cemented  the  Great 
Republic,  was  a  comparatively  unimportant 
event.  In  each  of  these  cases  the  struggle  and 
the  results  were  of  tremendous  importance; 
but  each  was  but  a  great  episode,  and  not  an 
epoch,  in  the  history  of  the  nation  passing 
through  it.  Each  was  a  physical  and  national, 
only  partially  mental,  and  not  at  all  a  world- 
embracing,  new  birth.  In  proof  of  this, 
attention  may  be  called  to  the  fact  that  the 
literature  of  neither  nation  was  profoundly 
affected,  and  therefore  was  not  transformed 
by  these  events. 

The  writer  does  not  think  of  asserting  that 
the  nineteenth  century  has  been  barren  of 
great  poets  and  prose  writers.  The  fact, 
indeed,  is  that  the  general  contributions  to 
literature  of  the  past  half-century  have  never 
been  surpassed,  in  either  quantity  or  quality. 
Whatever  poverty  the  nineteenth  century  has 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  85 

exhibited  in  poetry  is  relative  only.     That  is, 
it  is  poor  only  when  compared  to  the  works 
of  the  few  poets  —  the  concentrated  geniuses 
of  all  the  ages— already  named.    But  leaving 
these,  and  these  only,  aside,  Tennyson's  "  In 
Memoriam"  and  "Princess,"  and  Longfellow's 
uEvangeline"  and  "Keramos,"  will  bear  com 
parison  with  the  works  of  any  other  poets  of 
any   other   age  whatever.     Whittier's  "  Snow 
Bound,"  not  equal  to  Gray's  "  Elegy"  or  Burns' 
"  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  is  still  worthy,  as 
simple   annals  of  the  New  England  poor  at 
their  hospitable  firesides,  to  be  placed  beside 
those  great  pastorals,  both  in  a  poetical  and 
heart-touching  sense.     Macaulay,  Motley,  and 
Fiske,  as  philosophic,  graphic,  and   brilliant 
writers  of  history,  have  seldom  been  surpassed 
in  any  age;   while  for  double  gifts  as  an  es 
sayist,  De  Quincey  has  never  been  equaled. 
As  a  writer  of  spiritualized  English  of  the  most 
weird  and  heart-stirring  power,  he  is  seen  at 
his  best  in  his  "  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eat 
er."     Brilliant  with   high  color  as  his  word- 
painting  there  is,  it  never  oversteps  good  taste 
or   chastity   of    description.      Common -sense 
guides  his  pen,  even  when  he  describes  opium 
dreams   and    hallucinations.      His   language, 
though  like  his  dreams  —  gorgeous,  —  is  never 


86  WEALTH    AND     POVERTY 

more  extravagant  than  an  attempt  at  full 
description  necessitates;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  for  the  qualities  of  gentle  humor,  deli 
cate  fancy,  and  the  most  subtle  wit,  he  is  seen 
at  his  best  in  "  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art."  The 
best  touches  of  Charles  Lamb  and  Washing 
ton  Irving  are  not  equal  to  that  essay  of  De 
Quincey's. 

Other  ages,  too,  cannot,  because  natural 
science  is  so  recent,  pretend  to  furnish  such 
graceful  prose-writing,  illustrating  scientific 
truth,  as  that  of  Tyndall  and  Huxley.  Eng 
lish  is  there  exhibited  in  a  dual  capacity,  at 
its  best  in  direct  force,  power  and  scientific 
accuracy,  with  imagery  and  description  of  the 
most  appropriate  poetic  beauty  and  felicity. 
If  the  works  of  Darwin,  Wallace,  Agassiz,  and 
Draper  are  referred  to  last,  it  is  not  because 
they  are  least.  These  naturalists  have  made 
the  results  of  their  study  of  outdoor  nature 
as  intensely  interesting  as  the  most  brillant 
novel,  sober  fact  being  illuminated  with  the 
most  wonderful  scientific  theoretical  general 
izations,  which,  but  that  they  are  facts,  would 
be  relegated  to  the  airy  regions  of  fancy. 
The  poor  earthworm,  on  which  we  had  pre 
viously  heedlessly  trampled,  was  shown  by 
Darwin  almost  to  deserve  deification,  for  its 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  87 

universal   and   almost   miraculous   service  to 
agriculture. 

If,  therefore,  the  student  who  has  confined 
himself  to  and  made  the  best  poetical  and 
prose  writers  of  the  nineteenth  century  his 
own,  cannot,  as  he  must  not,  boast  that  he  has 
drunk  at  the  deepest  well-springs,  especially 
of  poetic  thought,  he  can  at  least  boast  (the 
limits  before  prescribed  being  still  prominently 
remembered),  of  having  indulged  in  not  less 
fine,  while  more  varied,  intellectual  nourish 
ment  than  any  age  of  the  world  has  hitherto 
been  capable  of  providing. 

When  we  take  what  comes  next  to  author 
ship,  the  arts  that  address  themselves  to  both 
the  mental  and  physical  eye,  we  are,  it  is  true, 
in  a  still  very  lofty,  but  yet  a  lower,  world. 
Therefore,  it  is  still  believed  to  be  possible  at 
least,  that  such  sculptors  and  architects  as 
the  unknown  Egyptian  sculptors  of  Abou 
Simel,  the  architects  of  Karnak,  or  such  Greek 
sculptors  or  architects  as  Phidias,  Praxiteles, 
Ictinus,  and  Lysippus;  such  Italian  sculp 
tors  as  Brunelleschi,  Bramante,  Sansovino, 
Michel  Angelo,  Omodeo,  and  Lombardi ;  such 
painters  as  Michel  Angelo,  Raphael,  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  Correggio,  Fra  Angelico,  Perugino, 
Titian,  Salvator  Rosa,  Tintoretto,  Van  Dyck, 


00  WEALTH    AND     POVERTY 

and  Eubens;  the  Gothic  architecture  of  the 
cathedral  of  Amiens,  Eheims,  Salisbury,  and 
Cologne,  or  the  Romanesque  Gothic  of  Milan, 
may  all  yet  be  surpassed.  There  has  not,  it 
is  true,  since  those  artists'  days  been  any  very 
hopeful  sign  that  this  will  occur;  but  it  is  not 
regarded,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  the  work  of  the 
poets  and  dramatists  paramount,  as  almost  im 
possible.  Therefore,  whatever  was  exhibited 
at  the  Chicago  Exposition  —  the  great  poets' 
works,  necessarily,  not  being  on  exhibition 
there  —  for  study  in  architecture,  sculpture, 
and  painting,  were  but  copies  in  some  shape  of 
the  work  of  the  giants  of  the  olden  days,  the 
works  of  men  who  have  nestled  in  their  brains 
and  therefrom  borrowed  their  ideas.  The 
value  of  all  latter-day  work,  indeed,  is  largely 
measured  by  its  success  in  keeping  the  great 
masters  in  mind.  All  later  laborers,  not  ex 
cepting  the  greatest  of  them  (in  sculpture), 
Thorwaldsen  and  Canova,  are  but  copyists, 
and  not  improvements  on  those  who  preceded 
them.  The  giant  in  the  plastic  arts  who  will 
in  genius  and  execution  surpass  the  ultimate 
attainments  of  the  old  masters,  may  be  pos 
sible,  but  he  has  not  yet  appeared,  nor  is  he 
very  sanguinely  looked  for.  In  his  "  Short 
History  of  Art,"  Turner  asserts  that  from  the 


OF     THE     CHICAGO     EXPOSITION.  89 

eastern  frieze  of  the  Parthenon  more  is  to  be 
learnt  of  the  true  principles  of  art  than  from 
all  the  books  that  have  ever  been  written. 
Ruskin,  quoted  and  endorsed  by  Symonds, 
says:  "  This  is  the  simple  test,  then,  of  a  per 
fect  school  —  that  it  has  represented  the  hu 
man  form  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  conceive 
of  its  being  better  done.  And  that,  I  repeat, 
has  been  accomplished  twice  only  —  once  in 
Athens,  and  once  in  Florence." 

On    this   subject,  W.  J.  Stillman,   the    art 
critic,  says: 

"  No  one  can  admit  that  the  human  intellect  is  weaker 
than  it  was  five  or  twenty  centuries  ago ;  but  it  is  cer 
tain  that  if  we  take  the  pains  to  study  what  was  done 
five  centuries  ago  in  painting,  or  twenty  centuries  ago 
in  sculpture,  and  compare  it  with  the  best  work  of 
to-day,  we  shall  find  the  latter  trivial  and  'prentice 
work  compared  with  the  ordinary  work  of  men  whose 
names  are  lost  in  the  lustre  of  a  school.  The  distinction 
is  not  one  of  mental  caliber  — for  now  and  then  we  see 
arise  an  individual  of  as  strong  and  marked  an  artistic 
mind  as  any  but  the  two  or  three  supreme  men  of  the 
past ;  but  their  best  work  (and  none  are  more  willing 
than  they  to  admit  it)  is  but  amateurs'  accomplishment 
beside  the  certainty  and  comprehensiveness,  both  in 
vision  and  execution,  of  even  minor  masters  of  the 
great  time.  .  .  .  There  is  not  one  living  painter  who 
can  paint  a  portrait  as  a  Venetian  painter  of  A.  D.  1550 
would  have  done  it;  only  one,  in  my  knowledge,  who 
has  the  same  feeling  for  it.  If  we  go  to  the  work  of  wider 
range,  the  Campo  Santo  of  Pisa,  the  Stanze,  the  Sistine 
Chapel,  the  distance  becomes  an  abyss;  the  simplest 


90  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

fragment  of  a  Greek  statue  of  B.  c.  450  shows  us  that 
the  best  sculpture  of  this  century,  even  the  French,  is 
only  a  happy  child-work,  not  even  to  be  put  in  sight  of 
Donatello  or  Michel  Angelo. 

For  these  reasons,  in  these  directions,  the 
Chicago  Exposition  did  not  nearly  equal  the 
first  London  Exhibition  of  1851.  But  in  other 
respects  the  late  Exposition  surpassed  all  of 
its  predecessors.  This  advance  is  mostly  in 
what  we  may  term  the  utilitarian  arts,  and  in 
practical  science,  towards  perfection  in  which 
the  most  of  the  genius  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  has  been  and  is  still  running,  since  the 
great  authors  of  the  past  so  triumphed  that  it 
is  felt  no  present  effort  can  equal,  much  less 
surpass,  its  achievements.  The  triumphs  of  the 
world  now  are  mostly  in  the  mechanical  arts; 
and  poetry  —  we  say,  poetry  —  of  a  very  high 
character  is  being  wrought  in  and  expressed 
by  them.  This  assertion  may  at  first  sight  be 
doubted ;  but  a  practically  unanimous  verdict 
for  it  can  be  obtained,  we  think,  by  calling  at 
tention  to  a  few  facts.  Let  us  take  one  of  the 
first  locomotives, — the  "Rocket"  of  Stephen- 
son, —  first  run  on  rails  in  England  in  1830. 
That  primitive  machine  is  simply,  in  general 
outline  and  construction,  a  rough  engine  and 
boiler,  stuck  rudely  on  boards  and  wheels.  To 
the  mental  and  physical  eye  of  even  the  person 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  91 

most  ignorant  of  mechanics,  it  is  an  utterly 
clumsy   and  inefficient  machine ;   how  much 
more  so,  therefore,  to  the  educated  mechanic. 
Place  it  beside  a  locomotive  of  to-day,  and  the 
difference  in  power  and  speed  of  the  two  ma 
chines  is  not  greater  than  their  difference  in 
appearance.     The  difference  is  as  great  as  that 
between   a   child's    comical    drawing  of  the 
human  figure  and  a  like  sketch  by  a  skilled 
artist.    Yet  Stephenson's  rough-looking  boiler 
on  boards  and  rude  wheels  was  the  parent  of 
the  present  locomotive.    The  change  is  so  vast, 
however,  in  the  development  of  grace,  beauty, 
strength,   compactness  of  build,  and   intense 
concentrated  propelling  energy,  as  to  be  really 
a  new  creation.     In  these  points,  indeed,  as  a 
world-transforming  means  of  land  transporta 
tion,  that  small  vehicle,  the  English  locomo 
tive,  has  no  peer.     The  American  locomotive 
is   equally   powerful,  but  it   is  not   so  small, 
simple,  or  compact.     When  we  compare  the 
progress    thus   made,  we  cannot  help   seeing 
that  beauty,  strength,  concentration  of  power, 
ease  of  motion,  and  therefore  grace,  have  been 
continuous.     Harmony    in  the    highest   me 
chanical  expression  has  consequently  elicited 
poetry   from   this   utilitarian   means  of  land 
transportation. 


92  WEALTH     AND     POVERTY 

Of  the  English  locomotive  Ruskin  says :  "  I 
cannot  express  the  amazed  awe,  the  crushed 
humility  with  which  I  sometimes  watch  a 
locomotive  take  its  breath  at  a  railway  station, 
and  think  what  work  there  is  in  its  bars  and 
wheels,  and  what  manner  of  men  they  must  be 
who  dig  brown  ironstone  out  of  the  ground 
and  forge  it  into  that.  What  assemblage  of 
accurate  and  mighty  faculties  in  them,  .  .  . 
infinitely  complex  anatomy  of  active  steel, 
compared  with  which  the  skeleton  of  a  living 
creature  would  seem  to  a  careless  observer 
clumsy  and  vile."  This  from  Ruskin,  who 
frequently  berated  steam,  smoke,  and  factories 
as  blots  on  the  landscape,  insisting  that  water- 
power  factories  only  should  be  tolerated. 

And  yet,  true  as  this  illustration  is  in  the 
case  of  the  locomotive,  moving  over  hill  and 
valley  at  lightning  speed,  it  does  not  afford 
anything  like  as  fine  an  illustration  of  mechan 
ical  art  progress,  moving  forward  in  physical 
harmony  and  poetry,  as  it  increases  in  size, 
power,  concentration,  usefulness,  and  speed,  as 
the  ocean  steamship  offers.  The  rigid  rail 
affords  little  opportunity  for  display  of  grace 
and  ease  of  motion,  compared  to  the  undula- 
tory  freedom  of  movement  possible  in  water. 
The  Cunard  Steamship  Company  had  on  exhi- 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  93 

bition  at   Chicago  a  complete  and   beautiful 
model  of  the  first  steamship  of  the  line,  the 
Britannia,  which  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  1840, 
in  fourteen  days  and  eight  hours,  with  steam 
and  sail  power.    She  was  of  eleven  hundred 
and  fifty-four  tons,  and   seven  hundred  and 
forty  horse-power.     Her    cargo   capacity  was 
two  hundred  and  twenty-five  tons.    She  had 
a  length  of  two  hundred   and    seven   feet,  a 
breadth  of  beam  of  thirty-four  and  a  third 
feet,  and  a  depth  of  twenty  -  four  and  a  third 
feet.     The  company   had  also  models  of  the 
other  side-wheelers  in  use,  until  they  were  suc 
ceeded  by  propellers.     Beside  these  models,  is 
that  of  the  latest  triumph  of  marine  engineer 
ing,  the  mammoth  Campania,  of  twelve  thou 
sand  nine  hundred  and  fifty  tons  burden,  and 
thirty  thousand  horse-power.     Her  length  is 
six  hundred  and  twenty  feet,  her  breadth  of 
beam  sixty-five  and  a  quarter  feet,  and  depth 
of  hold  forty -three   feet.     Looking   at   these 
various  steps  of  progress  in  marine  architec 
ture,  the  most  ignorant  can  see  at  a  glance, 
that  the  increased  power,  size,  speed,  carrying 
capacity,  and  passenger  comfort  of  the  Cam 
pania  do  not  more  surpass  the  Britannia  than 
the  grace,  beauty  of  lines,  and  general  appear 
ance  of  the  former  vessel  do  those  of  the  lat- 


94  WEALTH    AND     POVERTY      , 

ter.  The  tendency  evidently  has  been,  and  is, 
to  greater  length,  less  breadth  of  beam  and 
depth  of  hull,  to  rounded  and  keelless  bottoms 
—  in  other  words,  to  greater  litheness,  more 
fast-swimming,  fish-like  shape,  and  therefore 
to  much  greater  avoidance  of  contest  with 
water  and  wave  resistance.  Nor  can  it  be 
claimed  that  these  changes  resulted  in  less 
strength,  safety  in  sea-going  qualities,  or  more 
stomach  discomfort  from  rolling  and  pitching. 
Anything  like  a  full  appreciation  of  vessels 
like  the  Campania  and  Paris  can  not  be  had 
unless  a  few  facts  are  recited :  The  very  largest 
land  engines  in  factories  are  only  of  about 
two  thousand  horse -power,  and  the  largest 
locomotives  have  only  two  hundred  to  three 
hundred;  the  Campania  is  of  thirty  thousand 
and  the  Paris  of  twenty  thousand  horse-power. 
No  one  knows  what  great  mechanical  energy 
is  who  has  not  been  in  the  engine-rooms  of 
these  vessels  while  under  full  headway.  The 
power  and  rapidity  of  motion  of  the  engines 
of  the  Paris  can  only  be  expressed  by  saying 
that  they  are  illustrations  of  tremendous 
mechanical  fury  in  action;  and  the  wonder, 
after  thus  seeing  them,  is  not  that  the  vessel 
runs  so  fast,  but  that  she  does  riot  run  much 
faster.  This  is  accounted  for  by  air,  wind, 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  95 

and  water  resistance.  Yet  lying-to  in  even 
a  North  Atlantic  winter  tempest  is  now  prac 
tically  out  of  date.  These  vessels,  and  those 
of  the  other  crack  lines  also,  can  uninterrupt 
edly  stride  over  the  most  mountainous  seas, 
defy  the  fury  of  the  wildest  head  gales,  and 
yet  still  speed  on  at  the  rate  of  three  hundred 
and  fifty  to  four  hundred  miles  a  day  —  their 
full  rate  of  speed  being  five  hundred  to  five 
hundred  and  fifty  miles.  Their  machinery 
seems  powerful  enough  almost  to  turn  the 
world,  if  ever  it  should  grow  tired  of  revolv 
ing  on  its  axis.  The  fires  in  the  boilers  seem 
large  and  numerous  enough  to  form  a  Tophet, 
in  point  of  size  and  heat.  The  Campania  has 
one  hundred  and  two  furnaces.  These  are 
probably  the  largest  fires  ever  kindled  by  man 
on  the  earth,  and  the  wide-throated  blasts  of 
draught  let  in  on  them  keep  them  up  to  a  rage 
of  white  heat  at  all  times. 

The  Cramps  of  Philadelphia  have  just  fin 
ished  the  first  of  two  steamships  for  the  Ameri 
can  line.  These  vessels  will,  in  speed  at  least, 
it  is  promised,  surpass  the  Campania,  Lucania, 
and  Paris.  The  Campania  has  forty  times  the 
power  of  the  Britannia,  but  uses  only  five  times 
the  fuel.  Either  the  Campania  or  Paris  can 
carry  as  many  passengers  on  one  trip  as  the 


96  WEALTH    AND     POVERTY 

first  four  ships  of  the  Canard  line  could  have 
carried  in  a  year. 

Steamships  of  the  type  of  the  Campania  of 
the  Cunard  line,  and  the  Paris  of  the  Inman 
line,  and  some  of  the  vessels  built  by  the 
Cramps  of  Philadelphia,  are  such  monsters 
in  size,  power,  and  carrying  capacity,  and 
yet  such  perfect  models  of  speed,  grace,  and 
beauty,  because  of  their  harmony  of  line's, 
length  of  hulls,  and  seabird  ease  of  sitting 
the  water,  that  the  most  stolid  beholder  would 
at  once  admit  that  these  magnificent  vessels 
— "  which  o'er  green  Neptune's  back  of  ships 
make  cities  " —  are  literally  epic  poems  on  the 
water  —  poems  which  their  architects  built  for 
utility,  but  which  have  almost  greater  grace 
and  beauty  than  utility.  And  the  great  ma 
rine  architect  could  not  avoid,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  thus  running  in  lines  of  grace, 
although  his  most  ardent  intent  was  increased 
power,  carrying  capacity,  strength,  and  speed. 
Progress  in  these  great  utilitarian  means  of 
land  and  ocean  transport  has  all  been  toward 
vastly  greater  ease  of  motion,  beauty,  and 
harmony,  and  therefore  grace  and  poetry  — 
a  poetry  visible  and  perfectly  appreciable,  as 
I  have  said,  to  even  the  uneducated  eye. 
The  same  facts  will  be  found  in  all  of  our 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  97 

factories  —  perhaps  not  so  plainly  visible,  be 
cause  the  machinery  in  them  is  not  detached 
and  moving  in  the  same  graceful,  enclosing 
vehicles  as  a  locomotive  on  land  or  a  steam 
ship  in  the  water. 

The  present  saving  in  fuel  is  most  notable, 
too.  The  old  steamships  consumed  five  pounds 
of  coal  per  horse-power  per  hour;  the  new 
marine  racers  but  one  and  a  half  pounds.  In 
the  old  engines,  steam  was  used  but  once;  now 
it  does  duty  three  to  four  times,  by  triple  or 
quadruple  expansion  engines.  Instead  of  the 
old  pressure  of  thirty  pounds,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  to  one  hundred  and  eighty  pounds 
are  used;  steel  instead  of  iron  boilers  make 
this  great  pressure  consistent  with  safety.  The 
machinery  and  boilers  are  all  proportionately 
lighter  and  much  less  complicated. 

Now,  after  the  relation  of  these  facts  of  me 
chanical  art  progress,  and  the  assertion,  which 
will  not  be  disputed,  that  the  world  has  not 
recently  achieved  such  triumphs  in  strictly 
literary  work,  or  in  sculpture,  architecture,  and 
painting  as  it  did  in  past  ages,  it  is  time  to 
ask  if  it  must  in  the  future  content  itself  with 
the  development  of  mechanical  grace  with 
utility  —  with  poetry  and  power  in  the  loco 
motive  and  the  steamship,  in  the  factory  and 


98  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

in  the  field,  rather  than  the  very  highest  tri 
umphs  that  have  ever  been  recorded  in  poetry, 
painting,  sculpture,  or  architecture?  We  an 
swer,  that  this  seems  probable,  and  not  only 
probable,  but  reasonable,  if  the  amelioration 
of  the  condition  of  the  world's  workers  is  to 
continue.  The  Golden  Age  is  still  far  off;  yet 
the  present  age  is  a  very  forward  one  com 
pared  with  the  past.  The  steamship  and 
locomotive,  either  originally  or  in  their  im 
provement,  have  helped  the  world  forward 
immensely.  They  have  not  wholly  or  nearly 
abolished  poverty.  That  is  true,  indeed ;  yet 
the  age,  with  them,  has  taken  many  steps  in 
that  direction.  The  world  has  improved  very 
much  indeed  within  the  last  half  century. 
Mechanical  invention  has  been  the  instrument 
and  means  of  an  exceedingly  large  proportion 
of  this  advance.  Without  rapid  transporta 
tion,  little  progress  could  be  made  in  the 
amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the  poor. 
Bad  as  the  condition  of  the  small  farmer  or 
agricultural  laborer  may  now  be,  in  conse 
quence  of  the  vastly  increased  world  competi 
tion  caused  by  the  far  greater  rapidity  of  ocean 
and  land  transportation,  neither  of  them  is 
anything  like  as  badly  off  as  he  was  fifty 
years  ago.  In  other  words,  let  the  list  of  com- 


OF     THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  99 

plaints  against  the  present  age  be  ever  so  long 
and  weighty,  no  one  dreams  that  they  could 
be  lessened  by  a  return  to  the  comparatively 
near  past.  Very  few  European  laborers  now 
work  for  six  or  eight  cents  a  day,  while  that 
sum  was  a  common  rate  of  wages  everywhere 
half  a  century  ago.  No  Scotch  peasant  has 
now  the  hard  time  that  Burns  and  his  father 
experienced  in  scraping  together  the  barest 
necessities  of  life  as  small  farmers.  India  has 
been  saved  from  periodical  and  unavoidable 
seasons  of  famine,  not  by  philanthropy  so 
much  as  by  railroad  lines.  Without  the  latter 
the  strongest  philanthropy  or  the  most  liberal 
charity  could  not  aid,  because  it  could  not  in 
time  reach  the  suffering.  The  Yellow  River 
and  its  overflow  are  still  China's  sorrow,  by 
creating  periodical  famines,  because  Chinese 
stolidity  and  unprogressiveness  will  not  toler 
ate  railroads. 

In  the  comparative  infancy  of  railroads, 
in  1856,  Robert  Stephenson  asserted  that  the 
railroads  of  Great  Britain  then  effected  a 
direct  annual  saving  of  forty  million  pounds 
sterling  (two  hundred  millions  of  dollars). 
This  sum,  he  said,  exceeded  by  about  fifty  per 
cent,  the  interest  on  the  National  debt.  The 
present  railroads  of  that  country  cost  over 


100  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

nine  hundred  millions  of  pounds  sterling,  or 
say  four  billion  five  hundred  million  dol- ' 
lars.  If  all  railroads  were  obliterated  in  the 
United  States,  the  property,  personal  and 
landed,  of  the  whole  country  would  be  re 
duced  at  once  one-half,  if  not  two-thirds. 
And  yet  steam  is  but  an  inefficient  indus 
trial  tool.  About  eighty-five  per  cent,  of 
the  heat  of  coal  is  lost  in  turning  it  into 
working  energy  in  the  steam-engine.  But 
before  this  loss  is  modified  or  wholly  cor 
rected,  the  world,  by  electricity  or  some  other 
mode  of  creating  power,  will  probably  have 
advanced  in  mechanics  to  a  higher,  faster, 
and  far  more  effective  agent  than  steam  power 
by  land  and  sea.  Coal,  of  course,  will  still  be 
needed  in  the  production  of  electrical  power. 

The  continued  amelioration  of  the  sufferings 
and  hardships  of  the  common  people  of  the 
world  can  confidently  be  looked  for  from  the 
continued  progress  of  the  mechanical  arts. 
They  have  been  and  will  continue  in  a  much 
higher  degree  to  be  expressions  of  and  ministers 
to  utility,  philanthropy  and  poetry.  Look,  for 
instance,  at  the  progress  made  through  gang 
and  steam  plows,  reapers,  and  harvesters.  The 
man  who  now  sits  comfortably  driving  a  gang 
plow  seems  out  more  for  a  pleasant  day's  drive 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  101 

and  airing  than  a  day's  hard  work,  and  the 
same  is  measurably  true  of  the  changed  modes 
of  reaping  and  threshing.  The  worst  hand 
drudgery  of  plowing,  reaping,  and  threshing 
has  passed  away,  on  the  large  farms  of  the 
United  States  at  least.  Thirty  steam  thresh 
ers  only  were  required  to  prepare  for  mar 
ket  the  wheat  crop  of  two  counties  in  Ohio, 
which  would  otherwise  have  required  the  labor 
of  forty  thousand  men.  These  are  the  lines 
in  which  the  genius  of  the  world  is  running; 
these  the  tablets  on  which  it  is  recording  both 
its  material  and  mental  expression  and  pro 
gress,  and  inscribing  its  poetry  also.  This  is 
the  "  New  Learning  "  of  Bacon,  in  utilitarian 
shape,  but  still  in  unquestioned  wisdom  and 
poetic  expression.  Perhaps  some  scholar  in 
his  closet,  classicist  in  his  study,  or  worshiper 
of  sculpture,  architecture,  and  painting  will 
mourn  and  lament  over  all  of  this.  But,  as 
they  have  been  the  very  persons  who  most 
strongly  and  continuously  iterated  and  reiter 
ated  the  truth  upon  our  remembrance,  that 
these  masters  of  the  past  cannot  possibly  be 
equaled,  and,  as  a  rule,  but  faintly  imitated,  in 
the  present,  perhaps  they  are  partially  to 
blame  for  turning  a  portion  of  the  current  of 
the  world's  genius  to  fields  in  which  it  has 


102  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

achieved  incomparable  triumphs  —  triumphs, 
too,  in  which  progress  is  certain  to  continue 
to  be  still  more  rapid  and  assured.  "What, 
then,"  said  Macaulay,  in  his  essay  on  Bacon, 
"was  the  end  which  Bacon  proposed  to  him 
self?  It  was,  to  use  his  own  emphatic  ex 
pression,  fruit.  It  was  the  multiplying  of 
human  enjoyments  and  the  mitigation  of- 
human  suffering.  It  was  the  relief  of  man's 
estate."  No  Exposition  in  the  world  ever 
exhibited  such  an  array  of  machines  and 
appliances  for  the  relief  of  humanity  and  the 
mitigation  of  prostrating  drudgery,  and  there 
fore  for  "the  relief  of  man's  estate,"  as  that 
at  Chicago.  It  pointed,  too,  to  a  day,  not  far 
distant,  when  machinery  will  still  more  effec 
tually,  and  far  more  cheaply,  lighten  the  bur 
dens  of  humanity,  and  transport  man  by  land 
and  sea,  and  probably  through  the  air,  with 
far  greater  rapidity.  The  words  of  Macaulay 
inscribed  over  the  Transportation  Building 
at  Chicago  may  be  quoted,  illustrative  of  the 
truths  we  have  been  here  recording :  "  Of  all 
inventions,  the  alphabet  and  printing-press 
alone  excepted,  those  which  have  served  to 
abridge  distance  have  been  most  useful  to 
civilization."  The  triumphs  of  electricity  will 
almost  certainly  far  surpass  those  of  steam. 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  103 

it  is  the  coining  giant  of  greater  speed  and 
power.  By  it  steam  will  be  vanquished, 
though  not  abolished,  for  it  is  needed  to  pro 
duce  electricity.  And  since  human  effort 
could  not  compete  successfully  with  past  art 
and  genius,  it  was  very  natural  that  it  should 
strike  for  lines  in  which  it  could  be  regnant, 
and  where  the  amelioration  of  the  condition 
of  humanity  will  attain  its  chief  triumphs. 
Let  not  the  fact  be  forgotten  either,  that 
with  great  mechanical  there  has  also  been 
vast  mental  progress.  This  combination  has 
been  so  great,  and  the  union  so  fruitful,  that 
the  combined  product  renders  this  the  greatest 
mental  and  material  age  the  world  has  ever 
seen. 

Note,  too,  that  a  higher  science  than  that 
embraced  in  the  very  highest  branches  of 
mechanical  art  has  been  directly,  or  indirectly, 
constantly  laboring  for,  and  aiding,  that  art 
on  all  sides.  We  allude  to  natural  philosophy 
and  the  pure  science  connected  therewith. 
The  most  notable  laborers  in  England  in  this 
field  have  been  Faraday,  Joule,  Thomson, 
Huxley,  and  Tyndall,  with  Draper  and  Edison 
in  America.  These  great  investigators  in  the 
practical  sciences,  especially  in  the  departments 
of  chemistry  and  electricity,  have  made  dis- 


104  WEALTH    AND     POVERTY 

coveries  as  ethereal  and  poetical  as  anything 
in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  or  the  Tem 
pest,  while  at  the  same  time  founded,  as  the 
magnificent  "airy  nothings"  of  these  works 
are  not,  on  immovable  pillars  of  solid  fact. 
Michael  Faraday  was  one  of  the  best  repre 
sentatives  of  these  scientists.  Their  hands 
and  experiments  were  on  the  earth,  but  their, 
thoughts  and  imaginations  ranged  almost  to 
heaven.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that 
even  Shakespeare  himself  would  have  been 
honored  by  Faraday's  company.  Certainly, 
Faraday  soared  to  and  labored  in  as  high  a 
heaven  of  invention.  To  the  scientist  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  as  to  the  poets  of  all  cen 
turies,  nature  is  but  the  sensible  expression  of 
the  spiritual.  His  crucibles,  machines,  and 
tools  may  seem  very  mechanical  and  coarse 
instruments  of  research;  but  through  them, 
aided  and  elevated  by  the  highest  powers  of 
the  imagination,  he  has  revealed  truths  on 
which  the  mind  finds  a  repose  productive  of 
the  greatest  intellectual  joy  and  content. 
When  we  perceive  and  admit  this,  then  "all 
dregs  and  sediments,"  as  Symonds  says,  in 
another  sense,  "  of  the  analytical,  mechanical 
alembic  sink  to  the  bottom,  leaving  a  clear, 
crystalline  elixir  of  the  spirit."  The  men  who 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  105 

have  soared  the  highest  in  the  scientific  sky, 
too,  have  not  worked  for  gain.  They  had 
their  pay  in  their  work  —  a  wealth  that  the 
world  knows  not  of, —  in  their  consultations 
with  nature,  and  their  joy  in  the  laurels  from 
the  temple  of  industrial  peace  with  which 
their  brows  were  crowned. 

After  long  labor  in  the  mysterious  field  of 
the  Correlation  of  the  Forces,  Faraday  said :  "  I 
have  long  held  an  opinion,  almost  amounting 
to  conviction,  in  common,  I  believe,  with 
many  other  lovers  of  natural  knowledge,  that 
the  various  forms  under  which  the  forces  of 
matter  are  made  manifest  have  one  common 
origin,  or,  in  other  words,  are  so  directly 
related  and  mutually  dependent  that  they 
are  convertible,  as  it  were,  one  into  another, 
and  possess  equivalents  of  power  in  their 
action." 

Commenting  on  this  theory,  Tyndall  says: 
"Faraday's  difficulty  in  dealing  with  these 
conceptions  was  at  bottom  the  same  as  that  of 
Newton  —  that  he  was,  in  fact,  trying  to  over 
leap  this  difficulty,  and  with  it  probably  the 
limits  prescribed  to  the  intellect  itself."  Yet, 
Tyndall  adds :  "  In  his  search  for  the  unity  of 
all  force,  he  made  all  his  great  discoveries. 
The  discovery  of  magneto-electricity  is  the 


106  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

greatest  experimental  result  ever  obtained  by 
an  investigator."  In  speaking  of  the  import 
ance  and  usefulness  of  the  metals,  Faraday 
said  that  "refined  civilization  would  be  im 
possible  without  them."  He  also  said  that 
"the  ancients  deified  them  for  a  far  more  re 
stricted  use."  What  a  pleasure  it  is  to  remem 
ber  that  the  assertion  was  justly  made  of  this 
great  physicist  "that  his  life  was  a  struggle 
always  to  say  that  which  he  thought  was  true, 
and  to  do  that  which  he  thought  was  kind." 
It  was  said  by  Sir  David  Brewster  of  Sir  Isaac 
Newton's  "  Principia,"  that  it  was  a  work  that 
might  be  carried  to  other  worlds,  and  find  its 
truths  there  as  solid  and  acceptable  as  on  this 
speck  of  earth.  Much  of  Faraday's  work  was 
of  a  like  character. 

The  nineteenth  century,  therefore,  with  such 
explorers  and  conquerors  in  the  highest  in 
tellectual  realms  of  physical  truth  — the  fruit 
of  their  labors  nearly  all  consisting  of  mechan 
ical  art  triumphs  —  is  not  poor,  but  rich  be 
yond  computation.  Those  men,  though  labor 
ers  in  a  different  field,  were  justly  comparable 
to  the  greatest  poets,  architects,  sculptors  and 
painters  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

Considered  from  a  practical  and  poetical 
point  of  view,  there  never  was  such  an 


OF    THE    CHICAGO     EXPOSITION.  107 

Exposition  as  that  of  Chicago.  Every  civil 
ized  country  placed  there  its  masterpieces  of 
mechanical  art  progress;  and  if  we  can  im 
agine  the  goddess  of  civilization  and  human 
ity  presiding  there,  she  must  have  trium 
phantly  exclaimed,  as  she  looked  over  the 
miraculous  machines:  "  These  are  my  jewels." 
And  there  is  another  and  more  poetical 
side  to  these  utilitarian  Expositions.  Emer 
son  expressed  it.  He  said  that  the  real  ship 
is  the  mind  of  the  ship-builder.  Therefore, 
although  expressed  in  material  ships,  locomo 
tives,  and  gigantic  or  microscopic  machines, 
to  the  student  by  far  the  most  wonderful 
sights  revealed  in  that  Exposition  were  the 
expressions  of  the  minds  of  the  inventors, 
and  the  physicists,  their  leaders  and  allies;  and, 
therefore,  those  best  capable  of  appreciating 
them  were  there  as  much  alone  with  the  mind 
as  with  Shakespeare  in  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  or 
the  Tempest,  with  Michel  Angelo  in  the  Sis- 
tine  Chapel  or  in  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's. 
Imagination,  therefore,  still  rules  the  world. 
Of  all  the  children  of  genius,  indeed,  though 
gifted  with  very  different  mental  gifts  and 
expressions,  it  may  be  said,  quoting  the 
Psalmist,  "  I  have  said  ye  are  gods,  and  all 
of  you  children  of  the  Most  High."  In  many 


108  WEALTH    AND    POVERTY 

cases,  too,  as  great  mental  agony,  suffering, 
isolation,  and  want  of  world  appreciation 
would  be  revealed,  if  the  history  of  all  these 
machines  and  their  progress  could  be  read, 
as  Shakespeare,  Dante,  and  Michel  Angelo 
endured.  Every  great  genius,  indeed,  in  any 
department  of  supreme  human  effort,  is  at 
some  period,  and  frequently  all  his  life,  "'a 
man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief," 
but  his  joy  cometh  in  the  morning  of  success; 
and  the  greatest  and  best  of  these  men,  but 
for  the  sustenance  of  ideas,  could  not  have 
worked,  endured  and  triumphed  as  they 
did.  If  the  Chicago  Exposition,  therefore, 
was  comparatively  poor  in  what  heretofore 
has  been  called  the  "fine"  arts,  it  was  rich 
beyond  expression  in  those  which  are  both 
utilitarian  and  ideal,  in  useful  and  demo 
cratic  blessings,  the  fruits  of  which  all  the 
sons  and  daughters  of  men  may  in  some 
sort  largely  share.  Is  not,  indeed,  the  miti 
gation  of  human  loads  and  labor  the  high 
est  poetry;  the  harnessing  of  the  forces  of 
nature  to  human  use,  progress  in  the  great 
est  utility  and  divine  harmony?  Kepler's 
was  a  mind  comparable  perhaps  only  to 
Shakespeare's,  in  the  elevation  of  the  range 
of  its  imaginative  element.  If  restored  to 


OF    THE    CHICAGO    EXPOSITION.  109 

this  life,  that  "new  Prometheus  and  heaven- 
sealer,"  as  he  was  called,  would  have  been  an 
enraptured  visitor  at  Chicago,  and  doubt 
less  would  cheerfully  have  admitted  that  his 
work  on  Celestial  Mechanics  ("Harmonies  of 
the  World")  might  well  be  linked  with  ter 
restrial  harmonies,  as  illustrated  by  the  tiny 
or  Titanic  mechanical  triumphs  there  on  ex 
hibition,  of  which  triumphs,  too,  this  country 
can  justly  claim  the  largest  share. 


MAR  11  1969 


MAY  1 0  197G 


DATE 


20771-1,  '22 


YB    13514 


. 


